New documents detail concerns of Mizzou softball team

After days of tension between the Mizzou softball team and the school’s athletic department, new documents ABC 17 News obtained Thursday afternoon have revealed more details about what has prompted recent actions like the team’s playing under protest in a recent game.

One document is a letter sent by the team’s Unity Council to Mizzou Ahtletic Director Mack Rhoades on April 7. In the letter (which you can read in its entirety here), the council says some recent complaints filed against head coach Ehren Earleywine were not, in the council’s opinion, made with the intention of “true concern, but with the motivation of getting [Earleywine] fired.” The council cites as suspected motivation for the complaints the competition by the team’s twenty players for nine playing positions, and the players making the complaints “have had issues coping with either lack of playing time or poor individual performances.”

The council’s letter further describes a team meeting during which one player reportedly turned what was to be a time for constructive criticism into a “clearly disrespectful” situation. As a result of this and other instances in which the player in question “has attempted to compromise the structure of [the] team and undermine [the] coaches’ authority.”

The letter closes with the council’s defense of Earleywine as a coach, refuting an alleged complaint that he is “sexist or disrespectful to women” by stating Earleywine never made the players “feel degraded as women” and “treated each player with respect.” The letter then reaffirms the council’s wish that Earleywine remain in his position as head coach.

The second document ABC 17 News obtained gives a timeline of events related to the athletic department’s involvement in the Earleywine situation. You can read through the full timeline here.

Among the claims made in the timeline are that Athletic Director Mack Rhoades, if allowed to stay, “will single-handedly ruin not only [the softball] program, but the reputation of [the] University.” The council describes what it calls “interrogations” by university staff on April 3, following a win against the University of Tennessee.

The timeline then describes a meeting between Rhoades and the Unity Council after his receipt of the letter mentioned above, in which Rhoades “expressed his disapproval of the letter.” At a later meeting, Rhoades apparently failed to address the concerns of the council, telling them their “opinion mattered” but stating the council has “no say.”

On May 10, Doug Gillis, the team’s pitching coach, was told before leaving for the SEC tournament he would be suspended due to an unspecified allegation against him. The Unity Council claims Gillis was never told the nature of the allegation, even when it was dropped the next day.

At a meeting Tuesday evening, players and coaches met with Executive Associate Athletic Director Tim Hickman, during which the former told Hickman what they had dealt with the previous month. Players addressed the so-called “interrogations” mentioned above, claiming those doing the questioning were after certain answers and pressured players “to say things that would support Mack Rhoades’s [sic] personal attack on Coach Earleywine.”

ABC 17 News has reached out to the softball team and Mizzou administrators for comments on these documents and the claims made in them.