UPDATED: May 13, 2021 at 7 p.m.

Editor’s note: This article includes descriptions of mental health struggles and a mention of suicide.

Former softball player Anya Gonzalez remembers playing in wet jerseys during Syracuse’s 2019 spring break trip to Louisville, Kentucky. Gonzalez was forced to hand-wash the teams’ jerseys, but other former players said they weren’t dried because coaches — including head coach Shannon Doepking — didn’t want to hear the dryer all night.

As a result, multiple players got urinary tract and yeast infections. Others got rashes and skin infections. Doepking then “shamed” them for having infections and seeking treatment for them, one player said. Others said Doepking didn’t care.

“It was the wildest experience of my life,” a former player said.

The incident was one of many instances where former players said Doepking crossed a line. Seven former SU softball players and one current player told The Daily Orange that the head coach created — and continues to create — a toxic environment that includes verbal abuse, hazing and mistreatment.

Doepking told The D.O. that she’s a “straightforward, honest, to-the-point” coach who doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but she doesn’t haze or abuse her players, she said.

“I am not a saint by any means. I am a tough coach, and I’m a tough coach because winning is important,” Doepking said. “I was brought here to do a job.”

But those who’ve departed the team cite serious and ongoing mental health issues that stemmed from the culture they said Doepking created. Twelve players have quit, transferred or been cut from the program since her arrival in 2018, and all seven who spoke with The D.O. said the team environment was a major reason why.

“I remember going to practice … and just fearing for what was gonna happen,” said a former player who requested anonymity due to fears of retribution, like others in this story. “I remember sitting in the locker room and hearing kids just be like, ‘I want to kill myself. I don’t want to be here anymore. I can’t take it anymore.’”

In 2019, two of the team’s four graduating players said they brought a list of complaints to Director of Athletics John Wildhack and Senior Deputy Athletics Director Herman Frazier as part of their exit meetings. The two senior officials were shown photos from the team’s 2019 spring break trip. Frazier and Wildhack were shocked, two former players said. An SU spokesperson denied that players met with Wildhack and Frazier.

Twelve players have quit or transferred from the program since Shannon Doepking’s arrival in 2018. Elizabeth Billman | Senior Staff Photographer

The D.O. asked SU Athletics to comment on whether senior officials — including Wildhack and Frazier — were aware of the allegations. Frazier did not address those questions in a statement to The D.O. He said Doepking “has helped establish a competitive culture” since her arrival. “I feel strongly she is moving the program in the right direction,” the statement reads.

Two players who remained for the 2020 season said the only change they noticed stemming from the athletics department was an enforcement of the NCAA’s 20-hour per week practice rule. They said Doepking has continued to verbally abuse and mistreat players.

“At practice every day, you had a handful of people crying,” a former player said. “She would yell at you and make you feel so bad until you cried.”

The head coach said that her current players are happy with the environment. Toni Martin and Carli Campbell, whom SU made available to The D.O., said they hadn’t experienced any hazing or abuse. Both said everyone on the team gets along and enjoys being a part of Doepking’s softball program. An SU official sat in on the interviews.

In 2019, the Office of Equal Opportunity, Inclusion and Resolutions Services worked with SU Athletics’ Human Resources Office in an investigation into the program, a former player said. Doepking confirmed that an investigation took place but didn’t provide details.

On July 10, 2019, the former player and one of her teammates talked with the equal opportunity office on a conference call about the softball program’s culture, including the specifics of the spring break trip earlier that season.

Frazier also didn’t address The D.O.’s questions about an investigation in his statement.

During the spring break trip, at least two players were initially placed in a termite-infested room of an Airbnb in Louisville. In a letter to the editor published in The D.O. in response to this article, player Lailoni Mayfield said that Doepking moved her and another player to the house where the coaching staff was staying. The house where the players’ stayed had two players to a room. One player had mononucleosis, and it spread to several teammates during the trip.

When asked about the trip, Doepking said the team stayed in “mansions.” The players were treating the trip like a vacation, so she didn’t allow them to see their families, she said. She wanted to demonstrate to the team that seeing family on team trips was a privilege, not a right. “At the end of the day, it’s still a business trip,” Doepking said. Doepking normally carves out time for players to see family during trips but wanted the players to understand they needed to play better.

 

Prior to the 2019 season, Gonzalez confided in Doepking that she had been sexually harassed by a student from September to October 2018. Gonzalez said she had obtained a no-contact order with the harasser, and Doepking thanked Gonzalez for telling her. Two former players said Doepking told a section of the team about the harassment on a plane ride back to Syracuse after the 2019 Grand Canyon University Kickoff tournament. The coach mocked Gonzalez for how she “got sloppy leftovers” and made another inappropriate joke about the harassment later on.

Two former players recalled the incident, but both Doepking and a current player said they didn’t remember it. Over two years later, Gonzalez broke into tears as she recalled the incident.

Some players said that Doepking mocked their appearance — specifically their weight — in addition to the character of players when they didn’t make plays during practice or games. Most of the time, she tells those players that they “aren’t cut out for Division I softball,” Doepking said. But former and current players alleged that the head coach says they’re “weak,” “lazy,” or “a terrible person.”

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“A lot of the mental health issues were stemming from, not the overwork, but the mental aspect of how we were treated,” said Alexis Crabtree, who left the team after the 2019 season. “You never knew if today they were going to laugh at you or if they were going to laugh with you.”

In an email obtained by The D.O. from former player Jaime Barta to Associate Athletic Director for Sports Medicine Brad Pike, Barta noted Doepking’s “blatant disregard for the poor mental health” of players. Those concerns extended beyond navigating college during a pandemic and into the team’s overall environment. Another former player said Doepking told players that poor mental health means they aren’t mentally tough enough.

Widespread mental health struggles weren’t openly discussed — particularly in front of Doepking — because of the harassment they would’ve endured as a result of bringing it up, former players said. They feared Doepking would bring their struggles up in front of the team, too.

“You did not talk about (mental health issues),” a former player said. “You would’ve gotten your ass ripped in half … she would’ve told all your teammates, and then you possibly wouldn’t have played because you would’ve been seen as weak.”

Doepking also implemented the “punishment die” during the 2018-19 season. Each side of the die represented a different punishment, and Gonzalez said anything that Doepking considered “dumb sh*t” warranted a roll of the die. If players were on their phone during team dinners or while in the bathroom, that did too.

In 2019, two of the team’s four graduating players said they brought a list of complaints to John Wildhack and Herman Frazier as part of their exit meetings. Elizabeth Billman | Senior Staff Photographer

The punishments included implementing an early bedtime curfew, giving social media passwords to coaches to monitor players’ online usage, going on additional runs and writing a paper on the coaches’ topic of choice, multiple players confirmed.

Doepking got the idea of the die from her mentor — a fellow softball coach at Indiana University. She said it was a way to equally distribute punishments. Many former players noted that Doepking didn’t distribute punishments fairly and that certain players were favored over others, a trend that they said extended to Doepking’s unequal treatment of starters and nonstarters.

“(We were) trying to level the playing field on how we were going to handle all the things that were popping up,” Doepking said. “How that’s distorted into hazing, it’s kind of crazy to me.”

She said she phased out the die after the 2019 season because she wasn’t seeing the results she hoped for when she initially implemented it.

Since her arrival, Doepking said she attempted to change the program’s culture to try and make it feel more like a family. Freshmen and seniors were paired as “sisters” who did activities such as scavenger hunts together. But Crabtree said that when there’s so much negativity on the team, “it makes it hard to see each other as family.”

Doepking was hired in fall 2018, following the departure of former head coach Mike Bosch five months before the season. She said the timing of her hiring and a 2020 season shortened by COVID-19 have made it difficult for her to build the culture she wants at Syracuse. She recognized that her coaching style doesn’t align with all players.

During fall 2018, Gonzalez said she knew she had mono. Her eyes were swollen, but when she asked to seek treatment from a doctor on four separate occasions, Doepking told Gonzalez she had to continue attending practices.

At one practice, Doepking stopped hitting ground balls to infielders to mock Gonzalez’s swollen eyes. Doepking told the then-freshman “Don’t be a p*ssy” in front of the entire team. The head coach told The D.O. that she’s never stopped practice to mock the appearance of a player. But two former teammates remember the incident, and they said Doepking pausing practice to ridicule players was a common occurrence, too.

“You either buy into what she’s saying and completely change your values or you get sh*t-talked,” Gonzalez said.

The fact that Syracuse has lost 12 players in the past three years, including four transfers and others who stayed at SU as students following their departure from the team, should “raise a red flag,” former player Logan Paul said.

Doepking said the increased turnover is a byproduct of her reworking the distribution of athletic scholarships after her arrival. She said it was hard to justify a significant scholarship for an athlete who played limited innings. Her business-like approach to distributing scholarships and playing time doesn’t sit well with certain players, she said, and it’s “a hard pill to swallow” when she tells them Syracuse isn’t the right program for them.

But one current and seven former players allege that many of the same issues are still present. Many players who left the program acknowledged that they “wanted to speak out for a long time.” Former players said they hope current and future players won’t continue to have the same experiences as theirs at Syracuse.

“What we went through, I don’t wish upon anybody else,” a former player said. “I don’t want anybody else to ever go through this again. If (Doepking’s) allowed to stay here, and she keeps coaching kids, something bad’s going to happen. Not all girls are going to come out OK after this.”

— Staff Writer Alex Cirino contributed reporting to this story.

CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this post did not make clear that some of the former players interviewed for this story were cut from the program, rather than voluntarily quitting or transferring. 

CORRECTIONS: A previous version of this post stated that players said they stayed in a cockroach-infested Airbnb in Louisville. After the publication of this article, two players said they stayed in a termite-infested room, but Doepking allowed them to move to a separate house where the coaching staff was staying. A previous version of this post misstated what food Doepking bought for players at a gas station during the team’s 2019 spring break trip.

Published on May 10, 2021 at 12:18 am

Contact Connor: [email protected] | @csmith17_