Reports of misconduct against former Marquette and current Penn State women’s basketball head coach Carolyn Kieger were brought to light early Monday morning.
Onward State’s Joe Lister published a story quoting 13 total players from both schools describing Kieger’s coaching methods as “traumatizing” and “psychotic manipulation”.
“Three players and two assistant coaches spoke positively about Kieger,” Lister wrote. “Ten players described the experience of playing for the coach as one of the worst of their lives, saying the culture Kieger instituted in her programs hurt many players’ mental health, made multiple players suicidal, and incorporated aspects of racism, body shaming, bullying, and more.”
“In my senior year, I was dealing with depressive thoughts and suicidal thoughts,” former Marquette player Danielle King told Onward State. “I was talking to [Kieger] about it, and she dismissed it. And she basically talked me down to go into seeing the student counselor, or the counselor on campus, or whatever. And she was like, ‘I just think you need to go to the gym more,’ and basically shamed me in saying my work ethic was the reason why I was depressed.”
“Carolyn’s got a high, high standard and is very competitive and very intense,” former Penn State assistant coach Aaron Kallhoff said. “That’s going to look a different way to different kids. Some kids, it might be too much. Some kids, that might be exactly what they need.”
Former Penn State player Jaida Travascio-Green, spoke highly of her college coach.
“I was a senior when she was hired (2019-2020 season), and about a month into her first summer, I tore my ACL for the second time,” Travascio-Green wrote in an email. “It was ultimately decided between me, [Associate Chief Medical Officer] Dr. [Wayne] Sebastianelli, and Kieger that the best decision for me and my life would be to take a ‘medical disqualification,’ which just means they keep me on the team, I stay on scholarship, but it’s been decided that medically I shouldn’t continue playing. Kieger gave me the role of ‘student assistant coach’ and still made me feel important to the team even though I wasn’t able to play.”
“At the same time, my dad was terminally ill,” Travascio-Green said. “Kieger was incredibly understanding and supportive. She gave me a ton of flexibility in my responsibilities with the team, always checked how I was doing, helped me organize getting home to Indiana from State College on a few occasions, and gave me additional time off during the holidays, all while making me feel like I was still important and a valued member of the team even though I was not always around.”
While some players took Kierger’s coaching methods as tough love, others felt she crossed a line as a leader of young adults.
“You [are] a basketball coach. But at the end of the day, you [have] kids that you [are] trying to shape,” one former Marquette player said.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.“And right now, what you’re telling them is that if you’re not good at basketball, if you’re not the greatest at basketball, nothing else [expletive] matters. You might as well just dump it. And that’s what a couple of our teammates felt.”
The story also cites examples that could be interpreted as body shaming, racist or reckless behavior.
One instance a player cited as reckless coaching was a marine-esque workout during Kieger’s time at Marquette.
“They had these Army people who came in. It was 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning, and we [were] in a freezing cold pool,” said one former Golden Eagle.
“It’s during midterms… and she has 14 to 17 of us in a pool. Half the team can’t swim, but only one girl can hold on to the side of the pool at once. So everybody else has to be picked up by their teammates in the pool. We had to wear hoodies in the pool and take them off ourselves and put them on our teammates.”
“We [were] basically being waterboarded… People [were] screaming. People [were] drowning,” concluded the player.
Kieger was a standout player for Marquette, becoming the only player to reach career marks of 1,200 points, 400 rebounds, and 600 assists. She worked in basketball operations for both Miami and Marquette from 2006-2008 before serving as an assistant coach at Miami for six seasons.
She returned to Marquette as the head coach in 2014, leading the Golden Eagles to one Big East Conference Championship and three straight NCAA Tournament appearances
Kieger became the head coach at Penn State in 2019 and has led it to increased wins every season since.
Neither Kieger nor the Athletic department opted to comment on the article.
