Post by ncaavball on Feb 11, 2006 20:42:57 GMT -5
(Hey cougvb I read you wanted to read this -- here it is)
Since you asked.........
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This is a general response, like a Letter to the Editor, to the story “Dancing with Team Mizuno.” Had the author of the story not devoted 13 paragraphs to recounting Sports Performance’s history, I probably would not even be writing. But he did, so I am.
From reading the story, I gather that much of the information about Sports Performance the author recounts came from Rick Butler. And, as is so often the case with self-reported history, the version of what happened at Sports Performance in this story is replete with omissions that are essential to a truthful telling of the history of this club and junior volleyball. I say that because I was at Sports Performance for years and I know, first hand, what is fact verses what is now the popular fiction about the 1988 and before period of their history.
To begin with, it is morally and factually indefensible to dismiss Butler’s repeated and continuous sexual molestation of his players by labeling it “. . . a controversy [that] erupted from events occurring in 1988 between Butler and one of his former players. . . alleging improprieties that have been widely discussed over the past decade and need no further elaboration here” as if there is some legitimate doubt about the validity of the allegations.
The whole truth is that it was not an occurrence between Butler and ONE of his former players; it was credible testimony from THREE former players to a pattern of repeated attacks on them by Butler. It was not over events that occurred in 1988; it was over events that took place, continuously, for a period of at least seven years. It was not a mere “controversy” that erupted; it was testimony, under oath and cross examined, by these three young women that USA Volleyball accepted as fact and that led to a later Illinois Supreme Court ruling in the matter where one of the justices characterized Butler as a rapist.
John Tawa commented on the message board, “We desperately need more historical accounts like this.” I beg to differ. What we need is the whole truth, not more accounts like this. To make the statements the author makes without the “elaboration” of the facts he says is unnecessary totally distorts what actually happened.
For example, if the author really knew all the facts, it is hard to believe he would conclude “…it is a tribute to the players and families both that the team did as well as it did that year and that the club held together and mended its reputation.” To say this is to ignore all that Butler did and all that these young women, who came forward to try to stop him from victimizing even more of his players, endured. The verbal abuse and defamation heaped on these young women in the media and to anyone who would listen by the Butlers and those SPRI parents who “rallied around their director and coach. . .ticking up for the club and winning for Rick” was an astounding exercise of “Let’s make the victims into the bad guys.” It was behavior a decent person (which I assume the author is) would not applaud or participate in, let alone label as a tribute.
Butler’s reputation has never been mended – it has just been revised by those who will not or cannot face how reprehensible it is that he is still enabled to coach young women by our national governing body, by adults who look the other way because their own daughters were not abused (or so they think), by college coaches who bury their sense of morality for some purported recruiting necessity and by stories such as this one that don’t feel the need to “elaborate” on the facts but do perpetuate Butler’s self-serving version of the events.
It is indeed true that the parents at Sports Performance supported Butler. They then and to this day contend that because they personally didn’t see anything amiss, nothing must have happened. (By that logic, a stabbing that isn’t witnessed by a third party hasn’t taken place, never mind the blood and the puncture wounds.) But anyone who knows the young women Butler assaulted can attest they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by coming forward, making their stories all the more believable.
It is a very sad chapter in junior volleyball history that USA Volleyball, after a public hearing where they found Butler to be so credibly accused that they expelled him from membership for life, turned around and accepted him back as a member five years later. For an organization whose membership is about 90% young females to somehow convince itself that there is no problem with having a person of Butler’s abysmal record of behavior as a member is more than shameful – it is a complete abnegation of the moral responsibility adults have to protect children from known dangers.
Without a doubt, the most incredible fact in this whole story is that Julie Bremner’s parents did allow Bonnie to remain at Sports Performance to be coached by Butler. I probably will go to my grave not understanding how they rationalized that. But I will also go to my grave knowing full well that EVEREYONE close to this case, including Julie’s parents, knows that Butler did assault those who accused him as well as others, some of whom were only 15 years old when he first attacked them. Mr. & Mrs. Bremner’s decision to let Bonnie stay at SPRI is no proof whatsoever that Julie was not raped by Butler, although he and his defenders have constantly tried to make it so.
Many of what the author calls “urban sportscourt myths” about those days at Sports Performance are not myths at all. From having “been there, seen that,” I can verify that Butler DID forbid players to go to prom; that he DID make players weigh in EVERY day of practice; that he DID physically punish those who were, by his definition, “overweight” - making them do sprints till they dropped or ride the bike for an entire practice or jog around and around the gym until HE got tired, as he used to say (producing God knows how many eating disorder cases, but at least two of record); that he DID make the players tell him when they were having their period; that he DID have a prescribed body weight and type he sought to force the players to attain (MUCH lower than 15 to 18% body fat, by the way); that he DID throw some players out of the club for being overweight; that HE made the girls line up by height and carry their bags a certain way and line them up a certain way, etc., etc. I don’t know what he does today, but it is a fact that he did these things for many years before being revealed to be the sexual predator he is; perhaps those revelations encouraged him to change some of his ways. If you want to report history, you have to tell it the way it actually happened, and those things were definitely part of the Sports Performance experience for many players.
There is no disputing the apparent success of Sports Performance as measured in championships won, scholarships attained and discipline instilled. But one cannot, one must not, sugar coat or gloss over the way much of this was achieved or purport to tell the history of the club without addressing these events, anymore than one can claim to tell the history of World War II and ignore the Holocaust. It is just as wrong to ignore half of the truth as it is to fabricate it.
What Butler did and how USA Volleyball, along with many others in the volleyball community, responded to the inescapable conclusion that the accusations against him were true is disgusting and demoralizing to all who really do work to help kids learn and achieve through sports. No one who values coaching as a worthy pursuit or sport as a worthy vehicle for youth development should accept this version of the Sports Performance history. It is too insulting to those who are everything Rick Butler is not as well as to those who were the recipients of the abuse he handed out.
That all this happened a decade ago is immaterial. What matters is to tell the whole truth, not allowing the past to be glamorized or sanitized into something it was not. This is the only hope of preventing these awful actions from happening again.
John insisted I could not post this unless I also signed my name. Not that I mind signing my name – I just think it’s a double standard.
Kay Rogness
Schyster and Flywheel
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 5:22 pm)
Reply tap-tap tap, tap-tap-tap...
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Let the lawsuits begin!
and also
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 5:28 pm)
Reply I would feel better
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I would feel better about hearing the whole SPVB story if it wasn't coming from someone who is as arrogant as Kay.
I don't condone what Butler did. I think it was awful. But I don't think the author needs you looking down your nose at him, giving him a public lecture on his characterization of the situation.
Write the author an email.
hmmmmm
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 7:07 pm)
Reply You have to admit
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that was one of the best written responses I have ever seen on PVB.
boris
Local user
Posts: 547
(11/9/05 7:45 pm)
Reply Re: I would feel better
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Kay,
I wrote the article. To be clear, I approached John about doing the article. The original version contained most of the details you mention. John and I went back and forth for close to three months on how much should be included, etc. I decided not to go into overt details for a variety of reasons.
1) This is a junior volleyball site and it did occur to me that some of the readers might be 13-14 year old girls. I suppose we could have put a "warning label" on the article itself, but I felt that the "solution" we came up with made some sense.
a) to be clear that there was a controversy that year
b) to let readers know that the details could be found elsewhere so that parents could decide what and how much they wanted their children to know.
c) to keep the focus of the story on Team Mizuno rather than evoke a reaction about something the story was never supposed to be about.
d) fwiw, John also asked me to use my own name on the story rather than my board name.
2) I did wind up using Rick Butler as a source, but he was not my only SPVB source. My sources were quite clear that SPRI "culture" (beyond the controversy) had been exagerrated. I had other anecdotes about eating disorder issues, etc. but didn't have any from a clearly reliable source. There was unanimity that the description of the "urban court legends" was the way it is today. I'm happy to entertain any contrary information about the past or present of SPVB's training regimen, etc.
3) the other big issue that I struggled with was the nature of the "prepvolleyball" community. First, I posted here early on to see if anyone would talk to me about SPVB 1995 and got a surprisingly weird reaction. Second, SPVB and Rick Butler=flame war on any volleyball bulletin board. I've seen the flame wars and I don't know that they've added much information about what really happened or even what's happened since.
I honestly did worry that by writing a Team Mizuno article that included the information, it might well split the community and put this forum at risk.
I would have insisted on doing it differently if
1) I had written it for a purely journalistic forum (The Post, Sports Illustrated, a Sunday Magazine insert) I even considered just sticking it on my own blog.
2) if it had been an article on SPVB per se rather than the story of Team Mizuno. While the story was in the air in 1995, it may or may not have had much impact on the JO final that year.
3) If I hadn't seen the strange wars that spring from any mention of the scandal. I've noticed that the posters themselves tend to be fact proof.
4) I also simply didn't want to bring the site down. I respect John and what he's tried to do with this site. I also figure the more lawyers I can keep preoccupied with volleyball instead of litigation, the better for the rest of America.
To take an article about one topic and shift the focus to the other simply put the site in an awkward position.
When John and I went back and forth, I mentioned to him that if I didn't mention more of the details, someone else on the board would. I was a little surprised that it took as long as it did for someone to bring it up.
I was uncomfortable about making the choice that I did make to do one more "edit" of the article, but it was ultimately my choice.
It was never my intent to cover anything up or put a PR spin on any part of the story. I am the one though who ultimately made the choice and I still feel that it was for good reasons even if not everyone would agree with my reasons.
One thing I did learn in putting the story together was that there's much about junior volleyball that isn't all that wholesome and SPRI was not the only place where these issues have come up. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that we haven't been good keepers of the history of our sport. It does remind me that everyone who coaches, plays, and writes about this sport is mortal.
It might be interesting if prepvolleyball was a "warts and all" take on the sport, but at this point I don't think anyone conceives the site as that. There are very lively controversies about the nature of history for students or children about events that have nothing to do with volleyball. I actually do take more of a pro "critical thinking" stance on matters of serious history in a textbook.
I did choose to edit the story to the forum itself. I have no idea if that was "right" per se , but a big part of it was that I pitched John a story about team Mizuno and not a story about SPVB. The bulk of the material I left in was largely to contrast the philosophies and styles of the 2 clubs. We did agree that the controversy needed to be mentioned. The trickier question was how much detail does one have to add any time one mentions SPVB.
Please feel free to contact me at
fongs89@sbcglobal.net
Bystander
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 8:23 pm)
Reply Tough situation
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I too was disturbed at the way that Butler's actions were glossed over. I understand why Boris approached it the way that he did but I also felt that the article very much glorified SP and the philosophy behind its success. The glorification did bother me because there was such a high price paid by those girls, and who knows how many others. I for one appreciate Kay's moral courage in coming forward to set the record straight. We need more accountability in youth sports and ignoring past misdeeds (to say the least) is not the way to get there. Parents need to be ever vigilant when their girls spend so much time with these coaches and are so strongly influenced by them. Yes, the majority of them are good people with the best interests of the kids at heart but there are those who long ago abandoned ethical and moral standards in their quest for success. As a community we need to have a zero tolerance policy for the Butlers and the Gambelins of the volleyball world. Thanks Kay.
muncietown
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 8:32 pm)
Reply my problem
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My only problem with the article is that it says SPVB has won the most Junior Olympic titles.
disturbed
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 8:11 am)
Reply to and also....
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Give me a break.... Kay's arrogance should not matter one bit -- and that is if you deem her arrogant. Her comments were not looking down her nose at the author -- it was an honest, complete interpretation of the situation, asking some very pertinent questions. It is important to report the whole truth. And "authors" reponse was also also complete with explanation. You don't have to agree with either. But give them both credit for posting what so many others would shy away from.
boris
Local user
Posts: 548
(11/10/05 9:56 am)
Reply Muncietown
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You're correct. I believe SPVB has the most Open Titles and certainly the most 18 op en titles, but the club with the most overall JO titles is south and east of Chicago.
I had corrected it in earlier versions.
Mytake
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 10:16 am)
Reply kay rogness
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I know who Rick Butler is, but for those of us who have never heard your name before and weren't around SPVB in 1988, could you please tell us your background and relationship to the situation you've written about?
Were you a parent of an SPVB girl back then?
Were you a coach?
Do you have any affiliation with volleyball now (parent, club coach, HS coach, etc.)?
historian
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 10:19 am)
Reply Kay
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I believe Kay was one of the co-directors of Sports Performance when all this occurred.
She left soon after for Front Range.
JrVolley
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 10:52 am)
Reply Kay...
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Kay is the director at Front Range and left right after all the SPRI disaster.
www.frvbc.com/club/club.html
Kay, thank you for standing up and giving a voice to all of those victims -- I applaud your letter.
Oddly enough I believe FR trains like SPRI, so I'm sure she had no problem with the court training but the other stuff was over the top to say the least!
Keep up the good work Kay!
Cheryl Butler
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 12:49 pm)
Reply Kay Rogness
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For the past 10 years I have tried to stay quiet and be professional. Kay Rogness's response to the article on Team Mizuno and her bashing of Rick Butler and the Sports Performance program was the last straw.
I have been involved with Sports Performance since December of 1986. I not only coached, but worked in the office as well. I was also the assistant coach on the 18 Elite team in 1988 when Julie Bremner was a senior and supposedly going through her nightmare year. I was at every practice and on every road trip with her. It really is amazing how things can change with time and anything can be said and everyone takes it at face value.
First, I want to make a few issues perfectly clear.
1. There was never any sworn testimony or cross examination at the 1995 USAV hearing in Chicago. I was in the room the entire time.
2. Kay Rogness was not allowed to be in the room for the hearing so she cannot say what was said or what happened.
3. Kay Rogness was asked to leave the Sports Performance program in 1989 and was paid $55,000 for her share of the business over the next five years. She only decided to come forward to "protect other victims" after she had received her last buyout check.
4. Kay Rogness was the co-club director of Sports Performance the entire time she says all of the abuse, eating disorders, weight issues, etc... was going on. If all of those things were happening what was she doing to stop it?
5. From 1979-1989 Rogness carried on a 10 year sexual relationship with Rick Butler. Yes, this is the same period of time that she says all the sexual abuse was taking place in the Sports Performance program. And, Rogness did admit to her relationship with Rick under oath in 1995!
6. In 1995 Rick and I were preparing to adopt our son. We had gone to all the classes and doctor's appointments and we were at the hospital when he was born. In fact he slept with us on that first night. In her attempt to hurt Rick, Rogness tried to contact the judge who was overseeing the adoption process. It takes a big person to go after a baby that is just few months old.
7. The fact that Bonnie Bremner stayed in our program speaks volumes to this situation. Rick and I even met with her mother and father in our home and they sat on our couch and reiterated that they wanted Bonnie to be in our program and they know she would be working with Rick on a daily basis.
8. I sat and watched Rick Butler take four polygraph tests at his own expense and I also took one of my own regarding the allegations against him. We both passed every single question that was asked of us.
Kay has already testified under oath that she never saw Rick touch a player in an inappropriate manner. Anyone who knows the history of Rogness and Sports Performance knows she is the last person on this earth who would give an honest, unbiased view of anything to do with Rick Butler or the Sports Performance program.
Kay you can thank Rick in part for your job at Front Range. When the NCAA final four was held the first time in Madison, Wisconsin Rick saw Jim Miret in line buying a ticket. Jim said they were talking to you about being the director and Jim asked Rick for his thoughts. He took the high road and did not say anything negative about you. Even though he had asked you to leave the Sports Performance program because you had become impossible to work with.
Kay, let it go. You have a successful program and once again you found an excellent coach in Jim Miret who can make you look like a star and feel important about yourself. You were never doing this to protect anyone. It was just your attempt to get back at Rick, because he didn't fall on his face like you told everyone he would back in 1989.
This article was supposed to be about Team Mizuno not a forum for Kay Rogness to drag Rick Butler and the Sports Performance program through the dirt. Does Rogness really think that all those thousands of families whose kids have gone through our program are really that stupid? When there are literally dozens of clubs in Chicago to choose from.
I will put my reputation for honesty and my integrity on the line with Kay Rogness any time. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not a liar and I would never say things that I did not know to be true just to hurt another person. Every word I have said above is true and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.
Cheryl Butler
Since you asked.........
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This is a general response, like a Letter to the Editor, to the story “Dancing with Team Mizuno.” Had the author of the story not devoted 13 paragraphs to recounting Sports Performance’s history, I probably would not even be writing. But he did, so I am.
From reading the story, I gather that much of the information about Sports Performance the author recounts came from Rick Butler. And, as is so often the case with self-reported history, the version of what happened at Sports Performance in this story is replete with omissions that are essential to a truthful telling of the history of this club and junior volleyball. I say that because I was at Sports Performance for years and I know, first hand, what is fact verses what is now the popular fiction about the 1988 and before period of their history.
To begin with, it is morally and factually indefensible to dismiss Butler’s repeated and continuous sexual molestation of his players by labeling it “. . . a controversy [that] erupted from events occurring in 1988 between Butler and one of his former players. . . alleging improprieties that have been widely discussed over the past decade and need no further elaboration here” as if there is some legitimate doubt about the validity of the allegations.
The whole truth is that it was not an occurrence between Butler and ONE of his former players; it was credible testimony from THREE former players to a pattern of repeated attacks on them by Butler. It was not over events that occurred in 1988; it was over events that took place, continuously, for a period of at least seven years. It was not a mere “controversy” that erupted; it was testimony, under oath and cross examined, by these three young women that USA Volleyball accepted as fact and that led to a later Illinois Supreme Court ruling in the matter where one of the justices characterized Butler as a rapist.
John Tawa commented on the message board, “We desperately need more historical accounts like this.” I beg to differ. What we need is the whole truth, not more accounts like this. To make the statements the author makes without the “elaboration” of the facts he says is unnecessary totally distorts what actually happened.
For example, if the author really knew all the facts, it is hard to believe he would conclude “…it is a tribute to the players and families both that the team did as well as it did that year and that the club held together and mended its reputation.” To say this is to ignore all that Butler did and all that these young women, who came forward to try to stop him from victimizing even more of his players, endured. The verbal abuse and defamation heaped on these young women in the media and to anyone who would listen by the Butlers and those SPRI parents who “rallied around their director and coach. . .
Butler’s reputation has never been mended – it has just been revised by those who will not or cannot face how reprehensible it is that he is still enabled to coach young women by our national governing body, by adults who look the other way because their own daughters were not abused (or so they think), by college coaches who bury their sense of morality for some purported recruiting necessity and by stories such as this one that don’t feel the need to “elaborate” on the facts but do perpetuate Butler’s self-serving version of the events.
It is indeed true that the parents at Sports Performance supported Butler. They then and to this day contend that because they personally didn’t see anything amiss, nothing must have happened. (By that logic, a stabbing that isn’t witnessed by a third party hasn’t taken place, never mind the blood and the puncture wounds.) But anyone who knows the young women Butler assaulted can attest they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by coming forward, making their stories all the more believable.
It is a very sad chapter in junior volleyball history that USA Volleyball, after a public hearing where they found Butler to be so credibly accused that they expelled him from membership for life, turned around and accepted him back as a member five years later. For an organization whose membership is about 90% young females to somehow convince itself that there is no problem with having a person of Butler’s abysmal record of behavior as a member is more than shameful – it is a complete abnegation of the moral responsibility adults have to protect children from known dangers.
Without a doubt, the most incredible fact in this whole story is that Julie Bremner’s parents did allow Bonnie to remain at Sports Performance to be coached by Butler. I probably will go to my grave not understanding how they rationalized that. But I will also go to my grave knowing full well that EVEREYONE close to this case, including Julie’s parents, knows that Butler did assault those who accused him as well as others, some of whom were only 15 years old when he first attacked them. Mr. & Mrs. Bremner’s decision to let Bonnie stay at SPRI is no proof whatsoever that Julie was not raped by Butler, although he and his defenders have constantly tried to make it so.
Many of what the author calls “urban sportscourt myths” about those days at Sports Performance are not myths at all. From having “been there, seen that,” I can verify that Butler DID forbid players to go to prom; that he DID make players weigh in EVERY day of practice; that he DID physically punish those who were, by his definition, “overweight” - making them do sprints till they dropped or ride the bike for an entire practice or jog around and around the gym until HE got tired, as he used to say (producing God knows how many eating disorder cases, but at least two of record); that he DID make the players tell him when they were having their period; that he DID have a prescribed body weight and type he sought to force the players to attain (MUCH lower than 15 to 18% body fat, by the way); that he DID throw some players out of the club for being overweight; that HE made the girls line up by height and carry their bags a certain way and line them up a certain way, etc., etc. I don’t know what he does today, but it is a fact that he did these things for many years before being revealed to be the sexual predator he is; perhaps those revelations encouraged him to change some of his ways. If you want to report history, you have to tell it the way it actually happened, and those things were definitely part of the Sports Performance experience for many players.
There is no disputing the apparent success of Sports Performance as measured in championships won, scholarships attained and discipline instilled. But one cannot, one must not, sugar coat or gloss over the way much of this was achieved or purport to tell the history of the club without addressing these events, anymore than one can claim to tell the history of World War II and ignore the Holocaust. It is just as wrong to ignore half of the truth as it is to fabricate it.
What Butler did and how USA Volleyball, along with many others in the volleyball community, responded to the inescapable conclusion that the accusations against him were true is disgusting and demoralizing to all who really do work to help kids learn and achieve through sports. No one who values coaching as a worthy pursuit or sport as a worthy vehicle for youth development should accept this version of the Sports Performance history. It is too insulting to those who are everything Rick Butler is not as well as to those who were the recipients of the abuse he handed out.
That all this happened a decade ago is immaterial. What matters is to tell the whole truth, not allowing the past to be glamorized or sanitized into something it was not. This is the only hope of preventing these awful actions from happening again.
John insisted I could not post this unless I also signed my name. Not that I mind signing my name – I just think it’s a double standard.
Kay Rogness
Schyster and Flywheel
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 5:22 pm)
Reply tap-tap tap, tap-tap-tap...
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Let the lawsuits begin!
and also
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 5:28 pm)
Reply I would feel better
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I would feel better about hearing the whole SPVB story if it wasn't coming from someone who is as arrogant as Kay.
I don't condone what Butler did. I think it was awful. But I don't think the author needs you looking down your nose at him, giving him a public lecture on his characterization of the situation.
Write the author an email.
hmmmmm
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 7:07 pm)
Reply You have to admit
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that was one of the best written responses I have ever seen on PVB.
boris
Local user
Posts: 547
(11/9/05 7:45 pm)
Reply Re: I would feel better
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Kay,
I wrote the article. To be clear, I approached John about doing the article. The original version contained most of the details you mention. John and I went back and forth for close to three months on how much should be included, etc. I decided not to go into overt details for a variety of reasons.
1) This is a junior volleyball site and it did occur to me that some of the readers might be 13-14 year old girls. I suppose we could have put a "warning label" on the article itself, but I felt that the "solution" we came up with made some sense.
a) to be clear that there was a controversy that year
b) to let readers know that the details could be found elsewhere so that parents could decide what and how much they wanted their children to know.
c) to keep the focus of the story on Team Mizuno rather than evoke a reaction about something the story was never supposed to be about.
d) fwiw, John also asked me to use my own name on the story rather than my board name.
2) I did wind up using Rick Butler as a source, but he was not my only SPVB source. My sources were quite clear that SPRI "culture" (beyond the controversy) had been exagerrated. I had other anecdotes about eating disorder issues, etc. but didn't have any from a clearly reliable source. There was unanimity that the description of the "urban court legends" was the way it is today. I'm happy to entertain any contrary information about the past or present of SPVB's training regimen, etc.
3) the other big issue that I struggled with was the nature of the "prepvolleyball" community. First, I posted here early on to see if anyone would talk to me about SPVB 1995 and got a surprisingly weird reaction. Second, SPVB and Rick Butler=flame war on any volleyball bulletin board. I've seen the flame wars and I don't know that they've added much information about what really happened or even what's happened since.
I honestly did worry that by writing a Team Mizuno article that included the information, it might well split the community and put this forum at risk.
I would have insisted on doing it differently if
1) I had written it for a purely journalistic forum (The Post, Sports Illustrated, a Sunday Magazine insert) I even considered just sticking it on my own blog.
2) if it had been an article on SPVB per se rather than the story of Team Mizuno. While the story was in the air in 1995, it may or may not have had much impact on the JO final that year.
3) If I hadn't seen the strange wars that spring from any mention of the scandal. I've noticed that the posters themselves tend to be fact proof.
4) I also simply didn't want to bring the site down. I respect John and what he's tried to do with this site. I also figure the more lawyers I can keep preoccupied with volleyball instead of litigation, the better for the rest of America.
To take an article about one topic and shift the focus to the other simply put the site in an awkward position.
When John and I went back and forth, I mentioned to him that if I didn't mention more of the details, someone else on the board would. I was a little surprised that it took as long as it did for someone to bring it up.
I was uncomfortable about making the choice that I did make to do one more "edit" of the article, but it was ultimately my choice.
It was never my intent to cover anything up or put a PR spin on any part of the story. I am the one though who ultimately made the choice and I still feel that it was for good reasons even if not everyone would agree with my reasons.
One thing I did learn in putting the story together was that there's much about junior volleyball that isn't all that wholesome and SPRI was not the only place where these issues have come up. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that we haven't been good keepers of the history of our sport. It does remind me that everyone who coaches, plays, and writes about this sport is mortal.
It might be interesting if prepvolleyball was a "warts and all" take on the sport, but at this point I don't think anyone conceives the site as that. There are very lively controversies about the nature of history for students or children about events that have nothing to do with volleyball. I actually do take more of a pro "critical thinking" stance on matters of serious history in a textbook.
I did choose to edit the story to the forum itself. I have no idea if that was "right" per se , but a big part of it was that I pitched John a story about team Mizuno and not a story about SPVB. The bulk of the material I left in was largely to contrast the philosophies and styles of the 2 clubs. We did agree that the controversy needed to be mentioned. The trickier question was how much detail does one have to add any time one mentions SPVB.
Please feel free to contact me at
fongs89@sbcglobal.net
Bystander
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 8:23 pm)
Reply Tough situation
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I too was disturbed at the way that Butler's actions were glossed over. I understand why Boris approached it the way that he did but I also felt that the article very much glorified SP and the philosophy behind its success. The glorification did bother me because there was such a high price paid by those girls, and who knows how many others. I for one appreciate Kay's moral courage in coming forward to set the record straight. We need more accountability in youth sports and ignoring past misdeeds (to say the least) is not the way to get there. Parents need to be ever vigilant when their girls spend so much time with these coaches and are so strongly influenced by them. Yes, the majority of them are good people with the best interests of the kids at heart but there are those who long ago abandoned ethical and moral standards in their quest for success. As a community we need to have a zero tolerance policy for the Butlers and the Gambelins of the volleyball world. Thanks Kay.
muncietown
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 8:32 pm)
Reply my problem
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My only problem with the article is that it says SPVB has won the most Junior Olympic titles.
disturbed
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 8:11 am)
Reply to and also....
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Give me a break.... Kay's arrogance should not matter one bit -- and that is if you deem her arrogant. Her comments were not looking down her nose at the author -- it was an honest, complete interpretation of the situation, asking some very pertinent questions. It is important to report the whole truth. And "authors" reponse was also also complete with explanation. You don't have to agree with either. But give them both credit for posting what so many others would shy away from.
boris
Local user
Posts: 548
(11/10/05 9:56 am)
Reply Muncietown
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You're correct. I believe SPVB has the most Open Titles and certainly the most 18 op en titles, but the club with the most overall JO titles is south and east of Chicago.
I had corrected it in earlier versions.
Mytake
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 10:16 am)
Reply kay rogness
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I know who Rick Butler is, but for those of us who have never heard your name before and weren't around SPVB in 1988, could you please tell us your background and relationship to the situation you've written about?
Were you a parent of an SPVB girl back then?
Were you a coach?
Do you have any affiliation with volleyball now (parent, club coach, HS coach, etc.)?
historian
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 10:19 am)
Reply Kay
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I believe Kay was one of the co-directors of Sports Performance when all this occurred.
She left soon after for Front Range.
JrVolley
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 10:52 am)
Reply Kay...
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Kay is the director at Front Range and left right after all the SPRI disaster.
www.frvbc.com/club/club.html
Kay, thank you for standing up and giving a voice to all of those victims -- I applaud your letter.
Oddly enough I believe FR trains like SPRI, so I'm sure she had no problem with the court training but the other stuff was over the top to say the least!
Keep up the good work Kay!
Cheryl Butler
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 12:49 pm)
Reply Kay Rogness
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For the past 10 years I have tried to stay quiet and be professional. Kay Rogness's response to the article on Team Mizuno and her bashing of Rick Butler and the Sports Performance program was the last straw.
I have been involved with Sports Performance since December of 1986. I not only coached, but worked in the office as well. I was also the assistant coach on the 18 Elite team in 1988 when Julie Bremner was a senior and supposedly going through her nightmare year. I was at every practice and on every road trip with her. It really is amazing how things can change with time and anything can be said and everyone takes it at face value.
First, I want to make a few issues perfectly clear.
1. There was never any sworn testimony or cross examination at the 1995 USAV hearing in Chicago. I was in the room the entire time.
2. Kay Rogness was not allowed to be in the room for the hearing so she cannot say what was said or what happened.
3. Kay Rogness was asked to leave the Sports Performance program in 1989 and was paid $55,000 for her share of the business over the next five years. She only decided to come forward to "protect other victims" after she had received her last buyout check.
4. Kay Rogness was the co-club director of Sports Performance the entire time she says all of the abuse, eating disorders, weight issues, etc... was going on. If all of those things were happening what was she doing to stop it?
5. From 1979-1989 Rogness carried on a 10 year sexual relationship with Rick Butler. Yes, this is the same period of time that she says all the sexual abuse was taking place in the Sports Performance program. And, Rogness did admit to her relationship with Rick under oath in 1995!
6. In 1995 Rick and I were preparing to adopt our son. We had gone to all the classes and doctor's appointments and we were at the hospital when he was born. In fact he slept with us on that first night. In her attempt to hurt Rick, Rogness tried to contact the judge who was overseeing the adoption process. It takes a big person to go after a baby that is just few months old.
7. The fact that Bonnie Bremner stayed in our program speaks volumes to this situation. Rick and I even met with her mother and father in our home and they sat on our couch and reiterated that they wanted Bonnie to be in our program and they know she would be working with Rick on a daily basis.
8. I sat and watched Rick Butler take four polygraph tests at his own expense and I also took one of my own regarding the allegations against him. We both passed every single question that was asked of us.
Kay has already testified under oath that she never saw Rick touch a player in an inappropriate manner. Anyone who knows the history of Rogness and Sports Performance knows she is the last person on this earth who would give an honest, unbiased view of anything to do with Rick Butler or the Sports Performance program.
Kay you can thank Rick in part for your job at Front Range. When the NCAA final four was held the first time in Madison, Wisconsin Rick saw Jim Miret in line buying a ticket. Jim said they were talking to you about being the director and Jim asked Rick for his thoughts. He took the high road and did not say anything negative about you. Even though he had asked you to leave the Sports Performance program because you had become impossible to work with.
Kay, let it go. You have a successful program and once again you found an excellent coach in Jim Miret who can make you look like a star and feel important about yourself. You were never doing this to protect anyone. It was just your attempt to get back at Rick, because he didn't fall on his face like you told everyone he would back in 1989.
This article was supposed to be about Team Mizuno not a forum for Kay Rogness to drag Rick Butler and the Sports Performance program through the dirt. Does Rogness really think that all those thousands of families whose kids have gone through our program are really that stupid? When there are literally dozens of clubs in Chicago to choose from.
I will put my reputation for honesty and my integrity on the line with Kay Rogness any time. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not a liar and I would never say things that I did not know to be true just to hurt another person. Every word I have said above is true and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.
Cheryl Butler