While coaches usually hear the worst the students have to offer, it's not clear what happens to the comments directed at the upper echelons. Sports psychologist Larry Alford noted in his report, "Although swimmers vary considerably in their perceptions of coach Wingenroth and the swim program in general, they are unanimous in not feeling valued by the administration." And a review of Wingenroth's internal team evaluations turns up such comments as "Swimmers get the shaft," and "Where has Bobby May been? It is hard to motivate ourselves if the AD could care less about us, and there is no advancement in our program."
May offers a clue. "If I'm not doing what the kids think I should be doing, I'd like to hear about it," he says. "It may not be that I can do any better particularly in the area that they might be referring to, but I'd like to know what they have to say."
The director seems less interested in input from the coaches, who have no formal channel for throwing in their two cents. "If the players are evaluating us, why aren't we evaluating the administration?" asks Turville, who can't seem to let go of the present tense. "Theoretically, we're a little more mature than the 18-year-old who's evaluating us."
Perhaps he knows that the results might not be entirely favorable. "All of the ex-coaches had some type of shortcoming or other," says one coach. "But we all do. On the other hand, I see administrators who have significantly more shortcomings than we do who will never be fired."
If May sees any room for improvement in his department, he's not sharing it. And while he says there may be isolated pockets of misunderstanding that students have the power to hire and fire coaches, it's ludicrous to see what happened to Wingenroth, Turville, Chen and others in such a narrow light. "I make the decisions," May says definitively. "If anybody has a misperception, that's not good. I'm sure they're out there."
They are indeed out there, and all around him. The student newspaper titled its story about the swimming coach's demise "Rice swimmers oust Wingenroth." Alumnus and former team member Raymond Kan wrote university president Malcom Gillis an emotional letter. Kan concluded, "I wonder if perhaps this is an indicator of what our society has become, where unruly athletes and prima donnas are able to have their way by means of emotional complaints and arguments that have no basis in reality."
Former assistant coach Brian Smith also addressed the issue in a letter to an administrator following his resignation. "[The] perception is that the athletes are making the decisions," Smith wrote. "I know this to be a belief by many coaches in the athletic department and that this perception extends outside the [university]."
Another perception also persists: Whether by oversight or design, in the Rice equation that includes the best interests of faculty, workers, students and administrators, the rights of minorities and the good of the community, coaches have been forgotten. "We are the absolute lowest of the low," says Larry Turville.
And in the insulated world of the athletics department, their lot has remained nearly invisible. "I do not think our president, our provost, our vice president of finance are aware of all the problems down here," says a faculty member close to the athletics program. "They're very able administrators, and I think they would do something about it.
"I think any time that you take someone's life and muck around with it, it ought to be a concern to the university."
Email Bob Burtman @ bob_burtman@houstonpress.com
