Tolton Catholic boys basketball coach contract not renewed

Saturday afternoon Tolton Catholic boys basketball coach told ABC 17 News his contract was not renewed after taking his team to the 2014 State Championship quarter-finals.

In an email second year coach Tyler Clark said:

” Yesterday I was informed my contract as Tolton Catholic’s Head Boys
Basketball Coach was not be being renewed according to the Diocese’s
Advisory Council….I was caught off-guard and completely unaware this was a
possible outcome after this season until the meeting Friday afterschool.
2nd hand I have heard rumors that issues stemming from me being Protestant
and not choosing to teach at Tolton (and staying in the Public School
System) were a factor according to the Advisory Council. At this point I am
unaware of the full story or know my future coaching plans.”

After reaching out to Chad Masters, Tolton’s Athletic Director, the school responded with an email of their own.

The school said, “You are getting one side of the story, a very misguided one from a formerdisgruntled employee.”

Following that email, principal Kristie Wolfe sent a strong worded email that read:

“While we, as a rule, don’t share specific details about someone’s employment, I’d like to share our school’s perspective. I haven’t seen the email Tyler Clark sent to the media, but would like to say a few things in response to the tweets and emails of this afternoon.

1. Hubris (for instance, the kind that would motivate an individual to email the entire media community about his contract not being renewed) would be contradictory to our school’s values.

2. Such pride would likely also prevent someone from seeing all the many signs that those who supervise his work were not pleased over a period of many months.

3. We indeed welcome coaches, teachers and students of all faiths! By way of example, Bryndyn Crutcher, a very successful coach, attends the same non-Catholic church as Tyler Clark. Tony Eierman, also a welcome member of our school community, is also not Catholic and does not teach in our school. Neither of those matters are even remotely related to the issues we had with Tyler Clark.

Both Coach Masters, our AD, and I have said since the opening of our school that we want a competitive athletic program. YES, we want to win, but we want to do it in the right way. We will use athletics as a way to help our students grow in spirit, heart, mind and body. We will hold our coaches, teams and athletes to the highest standards of academics, performance and conduct. That is our vision, our purpose, and our very reason for existing.

If a coach cannot understand that, they will not continue on in our school community. As evidenced by the baseless accusations currently coming from Tyler Clark, we can safely assume that he does not understand this.

Unfortunately, we now appear to have a disgruntled former employee.”