Mckenna howenstine | Marlin Chronicle
Current and former student-athletes of the Virginia Wesleyan Men’s and Women’s Track & Field and Cross Country teams brought forward concerns about experiences on the team and the effectiveness of reporting channels in Athletics.
At a Student Government Association (SGA) meeting on Feb. 17, attendees discussed the policies for reviewing concerns from student-athletes.
The topic became relevant after student-athletes began sharing testimonies and organizing to seek changes. These included incidents beginning in fall of 2024.
At the SGA meeting on Feb. 17, junior track and field team member Zantia Durand attended to facilitate conversation on the topic during the meeting’s open forum and gauge SGA’s ability to react.
Student Senator Daryl Tucker, a senior, spoke at the meeting as a track and field team member and an SGA Student Senator.
“We’ve gone to our AD [Athletic Director], we’ve gone to our coaches and nothing is being done, but at this point, we are trying to get as many people to know our side of the story and to rally with us as we try to fix this problem,” Tucker said.
“This is not just a situation where it’s athletes mad at a coach,” Tucker said. “We are having people quit the team. We are having people transfer, and that’s just showing how deep the situation is.”
Regarding the role of SGA, “We know what we can and cannot do in the scopes of our regulations and our [SGA] Constitution,” Tucker said. “At the end of the day, we are a voice to the student body.”
“There’s only so much we can do with SGA, but SGA is supposed to be a place for our students to be able to come when they feel like something is not being done or that something needs to be fixed,” Tucker said.
Durand said she was scheduled to meet with the President’s Council for Inclusive Communities (PCIC) on Feb. 20 to voice her concerns. Junior Student Senator Joy Ramsey confirmed plans to accompany Durand to this meeting. Ramsey is a member of the Women’s Lacrosse team.
“The PCIC spearheads efforts to understand and address key issues while providing resources and support for students who bring diverse experiences and perspectives,” according to the Virginia Wesleyan website.
This PCIC meeting was canceled due to inclement weather that shut down the university. Durand said she was unable to reschedule because of conflicting track meets.
Ramsey initiated a discussion on how to know whether reports go through these channels and result in change.
“It’s a certain point where so many athletes are complaining about something to someone that some type of action needs to be taken,” Ramsey said.
Director of Student Engagement and Deputy Title IX Coordinator Jen Cohen serves as an SGA adviser.
At the meeting, Cohen compared these scenarios to the protocol surrounding a student conduct piece. “If you’re not the students involved, you don’t know what that outcome is, because that’s protected information,” Cohen said.
Associate Vice President for Campus Life and Operational Management Jason Seward serves as an adviser for SGA, and summarized the channels of reporting at the meeting. “If a student-athlete talks to a coach and doesn’t feel like something’s happened with the coach–that they haven’t been heard–then the next step would be to the Athletic Director,” Seward said.
“If something’s brought to the Athletic Department that would be a potential violation of NCAA policy or university policy, then it goes under review, first by the Athletic Director, and then if need be, it would go next to the Senior Vice President,” Seward said.
Seward said from there, the Senior Vice President Keith Moore would meet with individuals if warranted and examine evidence of the claim to determine the outcome.
Seward emphasized that evidence must be rooted in fact. “The way someone feels about something or dislikes someone, that’s not grounds for discipline or violation,” Seward said.
He said usable factual evidence would consist of specific dates, incidents and violations.
“If it was a personnel matter, where someone was disciplined or filed, that’s protected information; that’s not something that we would share,” Seward said. “Legally, you can’t.”
Seward said the best way he can help students with concerns “is to put them in the right channel.”
Executive Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Andrea Hoover-Erbig said in an email to The Marlin Chronicle, “As the Executive Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Senior Woman Administrator, all issues or concerns brought to my attention are carefully reviewed. The matter reported last semester was examined thoroughly by University officials according to policy and procedures, and determined to be without basis.”
Former track and field team members and current VWU students, senior Amia Barnes and sophomore Anisah Kersey, shared their experiences in reporting their concerns.
Barnes left the team before coming back to school for J-term. Barnes said when she came back, the team atmosphere had changed since last year. “We went from being like a family team to being a team that [is] based on only winning,” Barnes said.
ODAC announced coach Stephen Register as the new director of Men’s/Women’s Cross Country and Track & Field on July 23, 2024.
“Virginia Wesleyan University has championship DNA flowing through its veins. Our goal for the Cross Country and Track and Field teams at VWU is just that: to win championships and win them quickly,” Register said in the announcement.
Ryan Koval, junior and captain of the cross country team, spoke to Register’s coaching style. “He’s disciplined and doesn’t let a lot of things slide that have slid in the past,” Koval said. In the past, he said students who skipped practices and had failing GPAs competed in events. “Register is not like that. He does not take that,” Koval said.
He said Register “wants us to have good grades, but also not skip out on practice.” Koval said the discipline “is something that I believe we have desperately needed in this program.”
Barnes explained the circumstances that led to her first one-on-one meeting with Register. She said the first incident “was when he wanted me to run the [distance medley relay] (DMR). The DMR has four different events in one.”
“At first I agreed to it,” she said. “As I thought about [it], I was like, ‘no,’ I can’t do it because I’m already doing the 400 open, the open 800, the four by four, and you want me to do a DMR. That’s too much.”
“I’m gonna stick to my three that I’ve been doing,” Barnes said. “It’s my senior year. That’s what I want to do.” She said this led to a disagreement over whose decision it was.
Barnes said she took issue with more specific coaching approaches. In another meeting with Register, Barnes said, “I told him how he should talk to people and me. And when you want to critique somebody, acknowledge the good that they’re doing and then say, ‘Hey, you should work on this.’”
Barnes said after hearing the experiences of Kersey and other team members, “I think I just kind of hit my breaking point with some stuff.” She said this led to her departure from the team. Barnes said this happened quicker than she planned, as she intended on first meeting with Register and Hoover-Erbig.
Barnes shared concerns in an email to President Scott Miller, which led to a meeting with Moore. Barnes said, “He was just really open to listening…and I think that at that moment, that’s what we wanted—to be heard.”
According to Barnes, Hoover-Erbig later emailed, asking to have a meeting with Barnes and another member of the womens’ team to discuss the matters contained in her email to Miller. Barnes said that despite language used toward her that expressed understanding, she said she felt she was not being heard.
“That meeting I was bawling, crying…” Barnes said. “Everything I said had a rebuttal.”
She said she felt the second half of this meeting “was them portraying this narrative that I’m not being accepting of a new coach, and that’s why this whole incident is the incident.”
Barnes said she is familiar with the process of getting a new coach. “If anyone had been accepting of [a] new coach, it’s me,” Barnes said. “I’m not accepting of disrespect.
“I feel like the school did what they were supposed to do, but I feel like Athletics didn’t do what they were supposed to do,” Barnes said.
Barnes said the situation would have been improved had Register addressed it differently. “If he took accountability… to me that goes a long way,” Barnes said.
Kersey joined the track and field team in her freshman year and was removed by the coaches her sophomore year.
She first missed a mandatory practice due to oversleeping. Kersey texted her coaches that it wouldn’t happen again.
Unexcused absences result in a penalty of missing a track meet, according to team rules, which Register informed her of.
According to Kersey, other team members had missed practice or were late and were still allowed to run in the meet.
At a meeting shortly after the incident, Kersey said Register initiated conversations with her about having an attitude, which she said she felt was unjust.
“I didn’t care that I was benched the first meet. My issue was the way he was talking to me, and the inconsistency in the rules,” Kersey said.
Due to missing practice and a mandatory study hall, she was suspended from the team. Kersey said “it wasn’t inherently clear” that she was supposed to attend study hall.
Kersey and her father went to Hoover-Erbig, which led to a meeting that resulted in no change.
This conversation led to a meeting with Moore, in which “we didn’t really get to say what we wanted to because he wanted us to take the proper route and talk to Hoover,” Kersey said.
Kersey has observed the size of the team decrease. “I’m thinking about transferring so I can run somewhere else,” she said, and she knows others who have already transferred.
Former team member sophomore Anthony Stewart transferred to another school this year.
Stewart said that team members receive four mental health days. “If you miss one day of practice, he’ll take you out of a meet for every day you miss,” Stewart said. “Even if you communicate.”
When Stewart could not make it to practice due to a class, Stewart said he was instructed to use his mental health day or say it was unexcused.
“There’s people coming out to practice an hour late and he won’t say anything to them,” Stewart said.
Koval said that while he was not present during J-term, “From what I’ve seen in the couple weeks that I’ve been back and have been at practice, I really have not seen any favoritism there.”
Upon request for an interview, Register declined to comment.
He provided an email statement: “While I am unable discuss the specifics of my private communications with athletes or internal departmental affairs, I must express, for the official record, that multiple Track and Field and Cross Country athletes have reported to me that the newspaper’s disruptive approach to questioning and the apparent framing of its article have caused them significant discomfort and imposed unnecessary psychological strain. I bring this to attention to fulfill my commitment to the mental health and well-being of our student-athletes, which is of primary importance; and, further, to highlight the potential negative impact that the baseless and meritless bias of the story—which your team is constructing—may be having on their welfare.”
Junior track and field team member Opeyemi Kareem-Ojo had a meeting with Register in response to the alleged team issues.
“I went in his office talking about how the issues with the team have been getting a little out of hand, and I feel like he owes–even if he won’t give certain individuals an apology–but just the team, he owes them an apology for a lack of accountability and a lack of empathy also,” Kareem-Ojo said.
Kareem-Ojo said he has recently observed how the situation has resulted in more cautious coaching.
“A bunch of us wrote letters to the [President’s Council for Inclusive Communities]…and sent emails to various people that we think could fix things,” Kareem-Ojo said. “I don’t know if things are working in the background, but it feels like things aren’t moving forward.”
Kareem-Ojo feels the team atmosphere is primarily centered around winning. “To me… it just seems like he only cares about winning ODACs and taking people to nationals, and yes we do care about that stuff, but we don’t want to be just treated like a machine,” Kareem-Ojo said.
“We used to be one of the biggest teams on campus and now we’re average, which is not a bad thing, but knowing the circumstances of why the team has become so small, it’s understandable to know why things have changed like the energy and attitudes,” Kareem-Ojo said.
Kareem-Ojo said he plans to remain on the team but he would like to see changes in transparency, accountability and empathy.
By Lily Reslink
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Sydnee Washington
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Isaac Fick
