Talk:Training Rules

The harm that Rene Portland did

Under Rene Portland’s 27-year tenure as Penn State’s head women’s basketball coach (from the 1980-81 season through 2006-2007), there were 113 student-athletes who appeared on the Penn State roster. Seven players from Portland’s final season remained on the squad when Coquese Washington became the next head coach. Hence, there were 106 young women who concluded their time with the Penn State Lady Lions under Portland.

Of these, 57 completed 4-year college careers at PSU; however, the rest (49, or nearly half) stayed less than 4 seasons as Lady Lions. Penn State usually has few student-athlete transfers from other colleges, so most, if not all, of those 49 played their first college ball at PSU and left before their 4 years of college eligibility were up.

Thus, close to 46% of Portland’s players left Penn State while they still had college eligibility remaining. In fact, none of her five international players stayed longer than two years. That percentage seems rather high, but let’s see how it compares to Coquese Washington, who took over from Portland.

Through spring 2014, 33 players have played under Washington, including the seven holdovers from Portland’s last season. Eleven of the 33 are on the current roster and have college eligibility remaining. Of those 33, seven players have left Penn State’s team after spending less than 4 years there, most before 2011. So the attrition rate under Washington has been just 21%, well less than half of Portland’s attrition rate.

To put it another way, for Coquese Washington to match and keep up with Portland's appalling attrition percentage, nine of the current 11 players continuing on Penn State women's basketball team would need to leave the team abruptly this year, 2014. It is safe to say that player attrition under Washington will not match that of Portland for a long time, most likely not ever.

Obviously, something was happening under Portland’s tenure that caused young women to leave the team at an alarmingly high and unprecedented rate. The departure of some of these 49 athletes may not have always been a result of Portland’s well-documented psychological abuse of players whom she suspected to be lesbian. (One of the 49 was her assistant coach for a time.)

However, it is reasonable to conclude that at least half of these 49 ladies were kicked off the team for no reason other than, at best, Portland’s discriminatory intolerance and, at worst, her spiteful vindictive abuse of her own power. The actual number is likely even higher.

Rene Portland was certainly not a loser in all this. She coached for another 21 years after her discrimination toward her players was first reported, rolling up 693 career coaching victories. Further, she has never publicly apologized, nor admitted in any way that what she did was wrong. A $10,000 fine imposed by her employer did not deter her from coaching another year. Only when she was on the verge of losing a legal judgment and damages to one of her former players (Jennifer Harris, ironically a straight woman who merely befriended a lesbian), did she suffer consequences: a confidential out-of-court settlement with Harris and her resignation one month later.

The real losers are all the talented student-athletes over the years who were denied education at the university of their choice, the chance to continue their college careers (because of Portland’s continuing spite), the chance to compete for the U.S. and other national teams, and a possible professional career, such as in the WNBA. But most of all, the psychological abuse and suffering that she inflicted on her own players has caused incredible pain that continues to this day.

If anyone deserves a public apology, these ladies deserve one. Whether Rene Portland ever is forthcoming with apologies or not, the university itself should invite all of these ladies to a home athletic event before a huge crowd to honor them and offer them a sincere apology in front of the world. If Penn State won’t do this, then the worldwide Penn State community itself will have lost in the end.

Jeff in CA (talk) 07:24, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

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