Should Clemson Fire the Women's Soccer Coach?

If you missed it last week, Clemson's Women's soccer team has come under fire after a former player filed a lawsuit alleging that as a result of some hazing she suffered a head injury that prevented her from completing her soccer career at Clemson. The lawsuit also claims that the hazing was because she was targeted by head coach Eddie Radwanski.

Regardless of what is and isn't true in this I think one thing needs to be made clear. If Coach Radwanski knew about the hazing and covered it up or he instigated it he needs to be fired. Instigating it is completely out of bounds, and there is no good reason for him to have covered the incident up. While the discussion of what is hazing and if it is ok is much more nuanced than most on either side of the argument would have you believe, hazing should never result in injury let alone something as debilitating as what happened here. The trust of the team was broken here and those guilty should be punished properly. A young ladies life has been changed and there will be consequences.  And honestly I have a hard time thinking he didn't know about it.

I currently coach a local HS soccer team and it would be naive for me to say there isn't some level of hazing or tradition the team participates in. I couldn't tell you when it happens, what it is, or who has to do it; but I would put money on it existing. It happens to some extent on almost any HS or higher athletic competition. Any coach that truly thinks their team doesn't engage in some sort of hazing activity is lying, as coaches we just make sure to say hazing is wrong and that it shouldn't be done, put our heads in the sand, and hope nothing happens. You can't police kids 24/7 with this stuff and sometimes they make poor decisions.

Also looking at the report of the incident, some of it happened at the athletic facilities. Unless you are practicing or working out someone will generally be upset about athletes using the facilities. It is another indication to me that the coaching staff had some sort of knowledge about this. Maybe it was just a yearly tradition or perhaps Radwanski was targeting this girl, regardless the coaching staff should be held accountable.

There is also the interesting part where Clemson had put the team on disciplinary probation. Generally  that tells me that something occurred, schools aren't exactly in the business of deciding to punish teams for nothing. Now it doesn't say if the coaching staff knew about it, but the team definitely did something.

I will say that I don't think Clemson should make a move now. If I'm the AD I'd order another investigation from the ground up to find out what happened and then go from there. Assuming the lawsuit moves towards a trial more information will become available that will allow the school to make an informed decision. Clemson has made hasty decisions before and they turned out to be wrong. Despite what appears to be a fairly obvious cause for termination the school should still do the investigation.