Alleging gender discrimination, former women’s basketball coach sues Western Carolina
In May 2019, Western Carolina hired Heather Kearney to coach the Catamounts women’s basketball team.
A month later, Kearney was out of a job, fired after years-old complaints resurfaced from players at a school where she had previously been an assistant coach.
Now, Kearney is suing WCU and the University or North Carolina System, claiming gender discrimination and retaliation. Thomas Newkirk, Kearney’s attorney, said she was fired because of a double standard that exists between how men’s and women’s coaches are viewed in their treatment of players.
According to the lawsuit, Kearney was let go after a group of former Appalachian State players repeated allegations previously made against Kearney’s former boss from her time as a Mountaineers assistant coach from 2009-14.
The ASU players made several accusations against their coaching staff, including exceeding practice times, using ineligible players, falsifying wage records, bullying and pressuring injured team members to play. Head coach Darcie Vincent and Kearney left ASU in 2014, with no reason given by the school for their resignations.
Kearney’s lawsuit against WCU, filed April 24 in the Western District of North Carolina, says many of the allegations “were demonstrably false” and “previously vetted by ASU.”
But Newkirk said whether the accusations were true or not, that in firing Kearney, WCU used biased measures against her because she is a woman and the players accusing her were women.
Newkirk said similar accusations might not be made — or even heard — by male athletes against male coaches.
“If Sally comes forward because her arm hurts and she was forced to play by a woman coach, she’s going to get more sympathy,” Newkirk told the Observer. “If Jimmy does, he’s told to suck it up and nobody says a word.
“We’re not saying these were a bunch of lying kids, that’s not what it is. It was a biased response to normal behavior. If you want to doubt it, go watch a man coach a team. It’s the same behavior.
“So, either stop firing these women or starting firing the men.”
WCU is located in Cullowhee.
Former Western Carolina athletics director Randy Eaton (whose contract was not renewed in December 2019 and is no longer at the school) also vetted the allegations and, according to the lawsuit, and “recogniz(ed) they were without merit, recommended to the Board of Trustees that coach Kearney’s contract be signed and that she be retained as head coach.”
According to the complaint, the relationship between Kearney and Vincent was also a problem for some Mountaineers players.
Kearney and Vincent were a “conjugal couple,” in Boone, the lawsuit says. They were accused in the lawsuit of having more loyalty to themselves than to either ASU or its students.
After leaving Appalachian State in 2014, Kearney went on to assistant jobs at Coastal Carolina and High Point before signing a five-year contract at WCU, where she would be a Division I head coach for the first time in her career.
Kearney hired Vincent as an assistant as an assistance coach at WCU and they were holding practices with their new team when the contract went before the school’s board of trustees for approval in June.
By that time, according to the lawsuit, the five-year-old allegations from the former Appalachian players had reached the board, which didn’t approve the contract and fired Kearney.
WCU board of trustees chair J. Bryant Kinney declined to comment. An email to a Catamounts media relations representative seeking comment from school officials wasn’t returned.
Newkirk said he had hoped to avoid taking legal action by first trying to educate the WCU administration about gender stereotyping of male and female coaches and players.
“We tried the president, we tried the board of trustees, we tried the (UNC) board of governors,” Newkirk said. “We want it to make this an educationally framed lawsuit. I want to give my coach a chance to be hired another day.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2020 at 12:26 PM.