Rutgers University has had a rough go of it since video surfaced of former basketball coach Mike Rice verbally and mentally abusing players and now the new athletic director is dealing with another incident after allegations came out against Julie Hermann from her past.
According to ESPN.com, despite the fact that allegations surfaced that Hermann verbally abused her players while volleyball coach at Tennessee, she has received a vote of confidence from school president Robert Barchi. The allegations say that Hermann quit the team and called all 15 of her players in a letter "whores, alcoholics and learning disabled." She has denied the allegations, obviously, but a number of players have come forward to corroborate the Newark Star Ledger report.
"It's absolutely not true that I referred to them with any name calling like that," Hermann said Monday. "That's not part of my vocabulary.
Abbey Watkins, who played for Tennessee as Abbey Blazer during her time there, said that the allegations are true and that she hopes the coach has changed, but that the incident did occur. The allegations come at a tough time for the school, as they just fired a coach for being abusive and now they have brought in an AD that was abusive.
"I write this in response to make sure that the pain that we went through as a team is validated," Watkins wrote in an email Monday to ESPN.com's Andy Katz. "All of the things that were written are unfortunately true. Many of these things happened to me personally. I truly hope that Julie has changed but refuse for anyone to deny the fact that our dreams had been crushed and our hearts broken."
"It's been communicated to me (by Barchi) that I'm the athletic director and will lead Rutgers into the Big Ten," Hermann said.
