Silent no more: Additional former Texas Tech players speak out on basketball coach’s coaching methods

When she took the reins at Virginia Commonwealth in 2012, Marlene Stollings sold the program an American dream-like message.

It became a trend as she was named the head coach at Minnesota in 2014 and Texas Tech four years after that before she was terminated on Aug. 6 amid allegations of abuse within the program.

A 2014 St. Paul Pioneer Press article headline read: “Gophers women’s basketball: New coach Marlene Stollings will bring a high-energy offense.”

“She was talking about how basketball was going to be fun,” former Rams player Shekinah Henry said. “We were going to have this uptempo-type style. It was going to put fans in the seats.”

Unlike the rebuilding she’d hoped to do with the Lady Raiders, Stollings came into the Rams program looking to maintain the success established by previous head coach Beth Cunningham, who left for a job as an assistant coach at Notre Dame.

“Marlene Stollings will be another exceptional basketball hire at VCU and will make an immediate impact on our program,” said David Benedict, who was VCU’s interim athletic director at the time, in an Atlantic 10 article on June 5, 2012. “Her vision, work ethic, and track record of success in every aspect of the game have allowed her to become one of the most respected young coaches in the country. She will provide great leadership as we embark on our first season in the Atlantic 10 Conference.”

Somewhere along the way, though, it stopped being fun for the players of each program.

Former Lady Raider Sydney Goodson, who transferred to Kansas State back in April, remembers the moment being during preseason practice in 2018. For Henry and former Minnesota guard Jasmine Brunson, it was midway through Stollings’ first season at their respective programs.

What hurt Henry the most was that Stollings was supposed to be her ray of hope. The then-junior struggled with injuries during her first two years at VCU, which didn’t win her an ally with Cunningham.

So when Cunningham left for Notre Dame, Henry believed this was the fresh start she needed.

Just as soon as Henry’s hope was revived, it was diminished that much quicker by the time her junior season, and college career, were over. When the former Ram read a USA TODAY story Aug. 5 detailing Texas Tech players’ claims of an abusive program, she was brought back to that dark place that’s stayed with her for almost eight years.

The memories of harsh practices, conditioning drills and alleged verbal assaults overwhelmed Henry as she read accounts from former Lady Raiders, including Goodson, of their experiences with Stollings, who was fired a day after the story was published.

Goodson initially spoke to USA TODAY anonymously because, despite her appreciation for Texas Tech, she wasn’t sure anything was going to happen and didn’t want an awkward experience whenever the Wildcats played the Lady Raiders during Big 12 Conference play.

Once the article was published, however, she knew she couldn’t be silent anymore.

“It was too big to walk away from quietly,” Goodson said via text. “How we were treated was not okay, how administration handled it was not okay & I wanted to stand up & speak out about what we went through bc [because] it’s important. & if speaking out means one player doesn’t have to go through what we went through then it’s worth it.”

Brunson’s teammates sent her the article that Wednesday morning, and all were shocked. The details were all too familiar to her freshman and sophomore seasons playing for Stollings. More than anything, the former Gophers guard was surprised the allegations of abuse continued.

“We kind of just thought they probably switched things up when they went over there,” Brunson said of her and her teammates. “We were kind of surprised about (the report), but then at the end of the day we were happy about it because we had to deal with the same kind of thing and nothing happened.”

Former Lady Raider forward Brittany Brewer, who now plays for the Atlanta Dream in the WNBA, supported the players who complained in an open letter published Aug. 16 in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

On Friday, Texas Tech announced it selected the Florida-based firm of Holland & Knight to conduct an independent external review of the overall climate around issues of student-athlete well-being within the athletic department, per an email sent out from the university.

Stollings has strongly denied the claims of abusive treatment of players and contends Texas Tech fired her without cause.

“I have coached hundreds of athletes and helped rebuild multiple programs,” Stollings said in a statement provided to the Avalanche-Journal via her agent Friday. “I am confident most of those athletes believe they thrived from our time working together and thoroughly enjoyed their student athlete experience.

“Every coach has had a few athletes who feel that their experience did not measure up to someone else’s more positive experience or who did not succeed to the extent expected. My teams at Minnesota and VCU both thrived in the classroom and on the court during the time I was honored to lead them.”

Henry, however, wasn’t buying it.

“I was thinking (Stollings) got worse,” she said of the USA TODAY article. “The conditioning thing was a huge thing for her back at VCU, but we didn’t have heart monitors. I was overwhelmed. I was very upset because man, this woman has made a fortune off of abusing girls, and I was very angry, but I was proud of the players at the same time for having the strength that I didn’t have as a player back in those days to be able to speak up for themselves.

“Some of the things about how she would target the post players and talk about their bodies and call them disgusting. I was just like, ’Wow, she finally showed her true colors.’ ”

Hope for the future

Stollings gave Henry hope because of how encouraging the coach was upon the first meeting. Stollings noticed that Henry hadn’t had much playing time as a sophomore and inquired why. She explained to her new coach about her struggle with injuries and Stollings assured her they’d work together to increase Henry’s playing time.

“She really encouraged me at first and told me that she thought I could be a difference maker for the team,” Henry said. “That honestly gave me new motivation to work harder. I had hope now.”

Small things like how hands-on Stollings and assistant coach Nikita Lowry-Dawkins were with strength and conditioning workouts didn’t strike Henry as odd. She believed there was a subtle animosity between the two coaches and the strength and conditioning coach, but paid it no mind.

Henry eventually earned a starting spot, making seven starts on the year. But none came without a price.

Becoming a target

Henry described Stollings as angry and aggressive with a stare that would pierce her soul. Rams players tried to stay in her good graces, which wasn’t easy if you were a player Stollings targeted, Henry said.

Brunson never became a target, but recalls an alleged incident in which a Gophers teammate was dealing with the loss of a friend, who had committed suicide. Stollings met with her one night to check in, then yelled at her during practices the next day for not keeping up.

“(Stollings) literally was making her run until she just couldn’t take it anymore, so she started crying, hyperventilating and then that was that,” Brunson said. “Then, as teammates, we were obviously trying to console her, and she’s like ’No, leave her alone. She’s going to have to get through it.’ But nothing like that ever happened to me because honestly, me, I just would’ve left.”

Stollings and Lowry-Dawkins did, however, threaten to take away Brunson’s scholarship “almost every other day,” Brunson said.

While she never lost her scholarship, Brunson did lose her spot as a starter. She went from making 14 starts in 31 games as a freshman to one start in 32 games as a sophomore. Her playing time went down 2.1 minutes per game with her season stats decreasing as well.

When she asked Stollings about not starting as much, Stollings told Brunson it was because she wasn’t properly retaining information.

“I would very much disagree with that,” Brunson said, “because I was in there watching film with not just her, but I was in there watching film with coach Dawkins. If I had a question about something, I was going to ask so that I can better my understanding, but everybody got in trouble for asking questions. I didn’t agree with that. I just didn’t think that was the real reason why I wasn’t playing or starting, but I don’t agree with that at all.

“Personally, I just don’t think she believed in me as a player.”

Brunson said the team spoke with Dan Beebe twice during her first two seasons at Minnesota. Beebe, a former Big 12 commissioner, has a consulting firm, The Dan Beebe Group, that specializes in risk management. He was hired by the university’s athletic department in 2017 to evaluate the school’s policies and evaluate staff, according to an article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Still, Brunson said nothing was ever done about what the players had described.

“(Beebe) would have separate meetings with the coaches just about how, like the interactions between players and coaches are supposed to be, but that was kind of used against us in practices and stuff like that, so nothing really came out of it,” Brunson said.

Minnesota’s athletic department did not respond to multiple email inquiries from the Avalanche-Journal.

Henry said a player once complained to her parents about the excessive practices, and they confronted Stollings. From that point on, Henry said the player didn’t play much.

It was that kind of consequence that kept Brewer, a team captain, from speaking up while at Tech, fearing retaliation in one form or another.

“I was walking on eggshells trying to please them, while trying to support my teammates, but also while trying to muster up my own strength not to quit,” Brewer wrote in a personal letter published Aug. 16in the A-J. “There is currently a very blurred line between tough coaching and abuse. I have had very tough coaches who have demanded a lot of me, but they never belittled me or used fear as their primary motivating agent.”

Ed McLaughlin, who became VCU’s athletic director on July 24, 2012, released a statement to A-J Media on Aug. 14, saying, "We did not receive any reports of verbal abuse or harsh treatment from the women's basketball program during or after the 2012-13 season."

Goodson said several Lady Raiders allegedly tried to tell administrators like Judi Henry, who retired from being the university’s executive senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator after 40 years on Thursday, but to no avail.

In contrast, she recalls Stollings repeating something to the players in practice that they believed had been told to Judi Henry in confidence.

Stollings disputed claims that she held tougher practices or retaliated after players spoke to athletic department officials about their concerns, according to an ESPN article published Thursday.

“Nobody was hearing us,” Goodson said, “and they’d say the same thing like ’OK, thanks for coming in. We’ll take care of it,’ and nothing would change.”

Shekinah Henry said she didn’t have the courage to speak up while playing for Stollings. For a while, Henry managed to avoid the coach’s rage until she experienced what she recognizes now as a bout with depression. Just before the midpoint of the Rams’ season, Henry said she began to lose energy, suffered from insomnia and loss of appetite in addition to feeling anxiety when going to practice.

“I struggled with the plays and the conditioning,” Henry said, “because it was very hard to be able to sprint so much during practice, really without a break. She had this policy where you didn’t get water breaks, but you can get water whenever you needed it, but it was continuous practice. Sometimes starters, we would do a drill for like four minutes straight.”

She tried to handle what she was feeling, but it began to show in her play. Henry recalled feeling zero energy in the Rams’ Atlantic 10 Conference opener against St. Louis on Jan. 12, 2013. She was benched due to her fatigue despite contributing six points, five rebounds and a blocked shot in more than 13 minutes played in a 60-46 loss.

One of the Rams’ players had mononucleosis, so Henry thought she might, too, and went to the student health office to find out. She was negative for mono, but the doctor asked her if she had ever been depressed and suggested she visit the counseling center.

Henry shrugged it off. She told Stollings about her negative mono test, but didn’t mention the doctor’s depression diagnosis.

“I didn’t want to be labeled as weak,” Henry said. “Coach Marlene had already started to be kind of critical of the players.”

Henry remembered how Stollings had reacted to a player from Finland who had shown symptoms of diminished mental health. Henry recalls the player claiming the coaches really didn’t care about them and eventually quit the team.

Another player was on a strict diet plan and allegedly had to text Stollings everything she ate, Henry says. Stollings wasn’t as pointed in her commentary to the Rams players as she was claimed to be with the Lady Raiders, but would make joke-like comments about a player’s stomach or overall size, Henry said.

The strength and conditioning coach was assigned to take the player and the rest of the team on grocery trips to Kroger to make sure they were buying the right food.

No matter what Henry did, she couldn’t avoid being Stollings’ next target. She says she was subject to harsher treatment and was once told she couldn’t travel with the team after angering Stollings. A player had come to practice with the wrong socks on, so Stollings made the Rams run sprints. Henry couldn’t keep up, so Stollings put her on the sideline to run, then had her run double suicides and eventually the arena stairs while everyone else practiced. When practice was over, Henry recalled Stollings yelling that she wasn’t welcome in the huddle and didn’t deserve to go on the road trip.

“It was just a lot of that same kind of story that happened, just kind of isolating, me not feeling a part,” Henry said. “A lot of fake smiles, me trying to find that relationship that we had, the kindness that she showed and coach Nik showed at the beginning, but at that point, I wasn't really of any use.”

Another time, Stollings allegedly made Henry do a running motion in the deep end of a pool for 20 to 30 minutes. She couldn’t tread the water nor touch the sides of the pool; otherwise, Stollings would yell at her.

“At that point, I didn’t have much body fat, so I was just like a sinking rock,” Henry said. “I remember I’m in here, like, drowning. It was me and another teammate. The other teammate, she would let her go in the shallow end and run, but I couldn’t do that.”

The strenuous workouts and being told she wasn’t good enough only exacerbated Henry’s depression and led to more injuries. It eventually led to Henry’s playing career ending sooner than expected.

Broken promises

The Rams ended the season with an 11-19 record and missed the postseason for the first time since the 2006-07 season. In a postseason meeting with Stollings, Henry was allegedly told if she got injured again, she was off the team.

At first, Henry didn’t think that would be a problem.

“Well, that didn’t happen,” she said. “My first workout, I got injured.”

While running a drill, Henry felt a snap in her back. She says Lowry-Dawkins told her to keep going, so she finished the drill. When the team went on to the next one, Henry said she couldn’t move. She tried to tell Stollings, who was angered by Henry’s immobility and told her to get off the court and see an athletic trainer.

Stollings then allegedly denied Henry the keys to the elevator to get to the training room and prohibited managers from helping Henry as well. Instead, Henry said she was told to take the stairs.

“I’m like, ‘Didn’t you see me hobbling over here? I’m in pain,’ ” Henry recalled thinking. “ ‘I can’t move and you want me to climb the steps.’ ... I remember climbing those steps and it took me like 45 minutes to climb the steps. In that time, there was a whole other group that went through. She never came to check on me to see if I had made it up the steps or anything. I was like maybe she thought I was faking, I don’t know.

“After that, I was nothing.”

Henry had violated the no-injury pact. As a result, Stollings allegedly gave her an ultimatum: transfer or retire. Even if she retired, Henry says she was told she could keep her scholarship and stay in the women’s basketball dorms. She didn’t want a repeat of her past three seasons, so she decided to retire and signed her release papers.

Less than five minutes later, Henry arrived at her academic advisor’s office to find the advisor was on the phone with Lowry-Dawkins. The advisor handed Henry the phone and Lowry-Dawkins contradicted everything Stollings had told Henry minutes before. Henry says she was told she would have to move out of the dorms and finish 37 units worth of credits by the end of the fall semester.

She was offered the freshmen dorms, which didn’t have air conditioning, to stay in, but had friends that invited her to live with them. She took 18 credits in the summer and 19 during the fall, earning her degree.

After her release from the team, Henry can remember only one occasion of speaking with Stollings. It was after her father died of cancer and the coach gave Henry a card.

“I would go to the games and try to support the team,” she said, “but it was like I was another fan in the stands at that point.”

In contrast, Goodson was extended some grace following her injury in February. The USA TODAY article noted that players were mandated to wear heart monitors and keep their heart rate above 90% every game. In an effort to do so, Goodson says she was diagnosed with overtraining syndrome, or burnout. That happens when an athlete fails to recover adequately from training and competition, according to Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego’s website.

Goodson was warned the condition could lead to a stress fracture, but she was more concerned with keeping her heart rate up to avoid being Stollings’ next target. She eventually suffered a stress fracture in her fibula and missed the final five games of the season.

Confronting past trauma

The more Henry read the USA TODAY article detailing former Lady Raiders’ accounts of playing for Stollings, in a way, the more relieved she felt.

“I swear I was like I was not crazy because it was like everybody was brainwashed, in a way,” she said. “Everybody was just trying to be in her good graces because if you weren’t, she was going to attack you. … Nobody wanted to be the subject of that backlash. All in all, it was not a good experience with coach Marlene. And coach Nik.”

After completing the story that Wednesday morning, Henry rummaged through her closet and found her old VCU practice jersey. She put it on, took a photo and posted it Aug. 7 to Twitter.

“Why do I still hold on to gear that was used to make me think that verbal abuse was ok?” she wrote. “A testament to the mind games of collegiate athletics. We hold in pain and pretend it's pride.”

Brewer, who Goodson said took the brunt of the verbal attacks, expressed a similar sentiment in her letter. She acknowledged her process in dealing with a toxic environment for her junior and senior seasons.

“I am still healing from it all and rewiring my thought processes,” Brewer wrote. “My teammates who shared their stories are not soft, they are not the product of participation trophies and neither am I.”

Unlike Brewer and Henry, Goodson made the decision to do a graduate transfer. She saw how Brewer was treated as a senior leader and as one of the best players, and refused to have her college career end that way. As much as she loved basketball, the former Texas Tech now Kansas State guard gave herself two options: quit the sport she played her entire life or transfer.

Goodson no longer cared about being “the kid that went to three schools” and chose happiness. She played her freshman season at Arizona State before a sit-out year to compete with Texas Tech.

“Emotionally and mentally, I had to do what was best for me because I didn’t think anything was going to change, honestly. I really didn’t,” she said. “I think it came full circle, especially when I was like, ‘I can grad transfer and get out.’ I was like, ‘I’m going to because I don’t want to do this again and I don’t have to.’

“But not to knock Texas Tech. I’m so proud that I got my degree from there and, you know, there are some great things that came out of Tech, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t the experience I wanted to have.”

Goodson reported to Manhattan, Kansas, on July 1 to begin her final year of college basketball. She says she still suffers from some post-traumatic stress disorder, but refuses to believe the attacks to her character and integrity.

“My hope is in the Lord, so Marlene can’t break my spirit,” Goodson said. “I never gave her that authority to break my spirit.”

She’s much happier and mentioned how valued, encouraged and supported Wildcats coach Jeff Mittie and the coaching staff have made her feel.

Like Goodson and Brewer, Brunson depended on her teammates through the whole experience, which helped to make things more tolerable. She contemplated transferring after her sophomore season in 2018, but decided to stay once Stollings left for Texas Tech.

Brunson’s last two years were a night-and-day comparison from her first two. She admitted that, from a basketball standpoint, Stollings was a good coach, but that’s where it ended. Playing for former Gopher standout Lindsay Whalen, however, allowed her to thrive and end college with a positive view of her college basketball experience.

“Not even just coach Whalen, but her staff, to me, you can just really tell that they care about you,” said Brunson, who graduated from Minnesota on May 15. “Granted, I know yes, we’re on a scholarship there to play basketball, but life isn’t just about that. I feel like you need to have a relationship with us as people, as students. I feel like from that aspect, it was way better in terms of (Whalen’s) coaching style. Her communication was way better. It was just a different kind of energy, a different kind of atmosphere.

“We weren’t necessarily walking on eggshells with coach Whalen as opposed to coach Stollings and coach Dawkins.”

It’s taken Henry eight years to rebuild from depression she had another bout after graduating and undo the blows she sustained to her self-worth and self-confidence while playing for the Rams. She had been an athlete her whole life and found her identity in being a basketball player. Not having the sport left her feeling worthless and undeserving.

Her journey of self-discovery, still a work in progress, has led her to regain her confidence and counter self-defeating thoughts of worthlessness. To prevent someone else from going down the same road of mental turmoil, Henry, now in her late 20s, has decided to use her experiences to help others.

She earned her master’s degree in industrial organizational psychology from the University of New Haven and is now helping athletes with their mental health and figuring out what career path they want to pursue. She cites systemic problems within college basketball as doing more harm than good for athletes, which she hopes can change.

“You incentivize winning in a way where kids are only viewed as products, as a means to an end and it’s like, ‘How can you expect a coach to treat people like human beings when it’s all about the Ws?’ ” Henry said. “Kids are going to be put in these bad situations, but until that incentive structure for status of a coach and their compensation, as soon as that’s fixed or if it’s never fixed, the problem’s going to keep going on forever and ever because even with schools, it’s all about wins. It’s not about the emotional health of these student athletes or even just their career opportunities after that.”

Stollings stayed with the Rams for one more season before taking a job with the University of Minnesota in April 2014. She was there for four years, then arrived in Lubbock in 2018.

Henry has made it her mission to be that ray of hope for others that she thought Stollings would be for her almost 10 years ago.

“It’s a messed-up situation,” she said. “But I’m hoping that with this story coming out with coach Marlene, and hopefully other people will speak up, that some light will be shed to just the messed-up system that is collegiate athletics and the change will happen.”