Courting controversy

More than two years removed from his last coaching job, Kevin Emerick hopes he has left controversy behind him in pursuit of a fresh start.

Emerick, 44, Southeast's newest women's basketball assistant, has a coaching background where wins and losses have been overshadowed by soap-opera scripts: clashes with college administrators, a players walkout that resulted in a forfeit, lawsuits and an NCAA investigation.

But Southeast officials are confident they have hired a coach who was caught in a pair of unfortunate circumstances -- first at Oklahoma Panhandle State, where administrators broke NCAA rules and impeded an investigation, then at Montana State University-Northern, where Emerick contends he was given permission to date a student who was a former player and then faced a backlash from boosters and administrators.

"We looked into both situations, we thought, very thoroughly," Southeast athletic director Don Kaverman said. "It looks like he was involved in two unfortunate situations, one right after another."

The situations unfolded over less than two years in two different parts of the country.

• As athletic director at Oklahoma Panhandle State, Emerick was suspended in August 2000 while he was conducting an investigation for a report to the NCAA. He left the school without a formal letter of resignation to take the post as women's basketball coach at Montana State-Northern.
• He was removed from his post at MSU-Northern in December 2001 for violating the school's conduct policy in regard to having a relationship with a student. After a court battle returned Emerick to the bench, another court decision -- which followed a walkout by the players seeking his removal and an unprecedented forfeit -- upheld the school's right to buy out Emerick's contract and replace him on the bench.

While the story was playing out in Montana newspapers, ESPN even came to Havre, Mont., to conduct interviews for an "Outside the Lines" segment that never aired.

"Montana was a concern," Southeast women's basketball coach B.J. Smith said. "But there's the story, and there's the story of what happened. The first person I called on his resume was the athletic director when he was there, Ted Spatkowski, and his story was completely different than the papers. He told me if he had a job open today, he would hire him.

"After doing the homework, I was not nearly as leery of him."

Southeast selected an assistant with head coaching experience, and Emerick said Southeast also hired a coach who knows the consequences his actions off the court can have.

"Anybody would ask what could I have done differently to avoid the situations I was involved in," Emerick said in an interview with the Southeast Missourian in October. "I have asked myself that question a lot.

"I think the biggest thing you can do in life is go to work for people who have integrity and always keep the student-athlete's best interests in mind."

Starting out

Emerick began his coaching career as a volunteer assistant coach at his alma mater, Mount Mercy College in Iowa. His coaching biography on Southeast's Web site lists his dates as an assistant there as 1990 to 1992 and 1994 to 1996.

Emerick completed studies for his degree in criminal justice from Mount Mercy in December 1994 and was part of the graduating class of 1995.

He then became an assistant women's basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville for the 1996-97 season. When the head coach, Michelle Till, took a maternity leave in 1997-98, Emerick became the interim head coach and guided the team to a 10-15 record, its second consecutive season of 10 or more wins.

Emerick speaks fondly of the 7,000-student NCAA Division III school in southwest Wisconsin, but his departure there was not completely amicable.

He said he became the interim coach in a situation he called a "mess."

"We did OK," he added. "It was my first job, and I did a bad job there. I feel for those kids. You learn a lot of stuff in your first job."

Wisconsin-Platteville athletic director Mark Molesworth told the Southeast Missourian in October that Emerick had applied for the position when Till did not return but was not recommended by the school's search and screening committee.

Molesworth, who was the school's AD in 1998, had confirmed for the Great Falls, Mont., Tribune in 2002 that several players left the program during Emerick's time there. Contacted in October by the Southeast Missourian, Molesworth said he could not recall the number of players.

Asked if the situation was similar to MSU-Northern, Molesworth said, "I think it's inappropriate to compare the two situations."

Emerick said the only player who left the program was removed by the athletic director, but he said his recruiting efforts may have caused some current players to be nervous.

"I recruited more kids, and some kids were concerned about not having a chance to play next year if I was the coach," Emerick said.

But he did not get the job. Emerick said the lack of a master's degree kept him from being hired for the position.

Instead, he became the women's basketball coach at Oklahoma Panhandle State University in Goodwell, Okla.

His ties to Platteville were not completely severed, however. Till filed a gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against the school, and another former administrator filed race and sex discrimination lawsuit. Emerick was a witness in both cases, the first was settled out of court and the second of which is in the appeals process.

"None of it had anything to do with me," Emerick said.

NCAA and OPSU

Emerick proved his coaching ability at Panhandle State by doing something few coaches could accomplish there: win.

He guided Panhandle, an NCAA Division II school which had just recently made the move from NAIA, to a 17-10 record in 1999-2000. It was only the second winning season for any OPSU athletic team in a six-year span.

"His resume caught my eye because I knew of him just because of Panhandle State," said Smith, who coached at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M before coming to Southeast. "He won at Panhandle State, and there are maybe three people on the planet who have done that."

But during Emerick's second year at the school, when he also was the AD and compliance officer, he received an anonymous call on June 7, 2000, informing him the school's dean of students, Dirk Hibler, was making improper contact with members of the football team. The caller alleged, and the NCAA found in its investigation, that Hibler was taking student-athletes to a lake in Texas where he provided occasional meals and allowed them to use his boat for water skiing.

In Emerick's role as the school's compliance officer, he was asked to investigate what became one of the more unusual cases in NCAA history.

Emerick put together an internal investigation within a couple of months for the NCAA.

"He was investigating on his superior," Kaverman said, "which is unheard of, I guess."

About one month into the investigation, Emerick notified the NCAA enforcement staff that his job security was at risk.

After OPSU submitted an initial report and Emerick informed the NCAA of another potential violation, he was suspended by the institution on Aug. 25, 2000, according to the NCAA's final report.

"I told the truth," Emerick said. "I did an investigation that was ethical and reported violations truthfully to the NCAA."

According to the Amarillo Globe-News, Emerick was informed of the suspension when the locks on his door were changed and the Goodwell Police Department delivered a letter to him. Emerick said at that point he was taking another position as the women's basketball coach at MSU-Northern in Havre, Mont.

Emerick never turned in a letter of resignation to OPSU, however -- "There just wasn't any reason to," he said -- and was terminated by the board of regents on Aug. 31.

"There was just a rift between the president and myself on the NCAA thing," Emerick said. "Looking back maybe I should have [submitted a letter of resignation], but I never thought about it at the time.

"I was so astounded at the way rules were being violated with no regard for the student-athlete. Stuff you can't imagine actually happening, but it actually happens."

For two years after Emerick left, the NCAA probe continued. The president of the university, Dr. John Goodwin, appointed Dr. Kathy Turner, faculty athletic representative, to conduct the investigation. The investigation eventually found more incidents of ethical misconduct, but school administrators were not forthcoming in disclosing them to the NCAA, according to the report. Turner was granted immunity by the NCAA Division II Committee on Infractions and reported on the president's attempts to obstruct the investigation.

The NCAA cited Goodwin for violating the principles of ethical conduct. He resigned his position in August 2002, moving up his timetable for retirement by six months.

In addition, the board of regents effectively removed Hibler as dean of students that same summer by eliminating his position.

A few months later, in December 2002, the NCAA put OPSU on probation for five years.

The NCAA report found many instances of lack of institutional control and improper behavior by school administrators, including instances after Emerick's departure but just two noteworthy instances of violations during Emerick's time as AD and women's basketball coach.

First, eight students on academic probation were allowed to play in sports not coached by Emerick. During his revamping of the compliance department, Emerick said, he informed coaches of their athletes' academic standing but some coaches chose to play those athletes anyway.

The women's basketball program's booster family program constituted a secondary violation by providing benefits and gifts beyond those available to other students.

"The program had been in place when the school was an NAIA school," Emerick said. "We should've dismantled it better than we did. We should've sent a letter to the booster parents citing the bylaws."

Those involved who still work at OPSU are not keen on commenting about how Emerick performed at the school.

"I don't think I was around him enough to determine," said Dr. Wayne Manning, who became the interim athletic director after Emerick's departure and is now the school's interim vice president for academic affairs. "We did a few student appeals together. All that went well."

Turner did not want to comment about the incidents. "Attorneys have told us not to," she said.

But Doug Schumpert, who left his men's basketball post at the school a little before Emerick, said Emerick "did what was right at Panhandle."

Of the OPSU administration, Schumpert said, "People were incompetent to run it. I can't describe it to you.

"I thought Kevin handled it the best way it could be handled," added Schumpert, now a high school coach in Oklahoma. "An NCAA investigation needed to take place, and they didn't really want to pursue it. It needed to be reported.

"Kevin did what was right. This ought to be about his perseverance and staying after it and overcoming, about how hard he worked to overcome."

Strife in a Northern town

The ongoing investigation back in Oklahoma did not help Emerick when he came under fire during his second year as the women's basketball coach at Montana State University-Northern.

He had finished his first season by guiding the Skylights to a 26-8 record and a trip to the final 16 of the NAIA national tournament. That success came while rebuilding a program that had won nine conference titles from 1988 to 1999 but was coming off an a 18-14 campaign in 1999-2000.

"It was a tough situation, but we knew we could win there," Emerick said. "The budget was good, the town was supportive of the basketball program."

The town's interest in the team may also have led to Emerick's undoing in a tale that was spread across the state's newspapers and attracted interest from EPSN's "Outside the Lines."

Following that first season, in April 2001, Emerick said he approached his superiors -- athletic director Spatkowski and Chancellor Alex Capdeville -- to express his interest in pursuing a relationship with a former player, Anna Fabatz, who still had to complete some studies at the school.

Emerick, who at 41 was then married but separated, came away from the meeting with the distinct impression the school's position was that his personal business was his own business. Spatkowski confirmed in an interview with the Southeast Missourian that was his impression as well. He said it surprised him since it contradicted the school's ethics code.

"Basically, it fell out of my hands," Spatkowksi said. "It became a personal issue between the president and the coach."

Capdeville did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story. The university's public relations official, Jim Potter, maintained that authorization for a relationship was not granted, calling the claim "ludicrous."

The relationship became an issue again in the fall when Emerick considered having the former player serve as his assistant. The school nixed that.

School administrators revisited the situation early in the basketball season, contacting a third party in the state's university system to investigate the nature of the relationship and issue a report. The report was not made public, according to Potter.

Southeast officials were told during their background check of Emerick that MSU-Northern turned up pressure on Emerick due to external influence: A university booster with a daughter on the team allegedly made the topic an issue when the player's game time decreased.

The school suspended Emerick from coaching and teaching with pay on Dec. 12, 2001. He told the Southeast Missourian he was informed he had lost control of his program, was noncommunicative and was disruptive to the campus.

According to a letter Capdeville wrote to Emerick on Dec. 19 of that year and included in Montana court documents, maintaining a personal relationship, a lack of candor in providing information about the nature of the relationship and poor judgment were cited as reasons for the disciplinary action.

The Skylights were 11-2 at the time and ranked 18th in the NAIA.

"I was shocked," Emerick said. "I didn't know it was coming. We were having a great year to that point, unbeaten in conference."

One player on the team, a freshman forward, was quoted in The Havre Daily News saying the suspension was a shock and that "we thought everything was fine."

Emerick sought an injunction the next day and was reinstated as coach on the decision of a district court.

"I wanted to coach," Emerick said. "The kids deserved a chance to be successful. When you're in that situation, it's hard to have perspective. Maybe what I should have done was just leave it alone. But at the time, I didn't think that."

Emerick returned, but some players on the team didn't want him back. Combined with pressure from the administration and supporters in the Havre community, Emerick was facing a wave of hostility that crested when the team returned from an 0-2 road trip that dropped its record to 17-7.

Nine players signed a petition asking for Emerick's immediate removal and refused to practice or play for him, calling him abusive. During an eight-day walkout, the team forfeited a game Feb. 9, 2002, at the University of Great Falls.

"I'm not an abusive coach," Emerick said. "The players had gone through a tough year. It had been going on since October, and they wanted some stability. I understand they'd been through a lot to that point."

The Montana Supreme Court, which had first refused to overturn the district court's injunction, decided to revisit its decision and on Feb. 12 upheld the school's decision to remove Emerick. The court said the lower court's ruling would call into question the common practice of a school's ability to buy out a coach.

Spatkowski, who was quoted in the Great Falls Tribune on Feb. 9 saying "red flags were there" in Emerick's background, left the university about a year later.

"I was between a rock and a hard place," he said earlier this month when reached at a university in Ohio where he teaches. "It could have been handled differently, but that applies to all sides. It got too personal and when it became personal, it was unbelievable."

As to the player revolt, Spatkowski said, "I met with the players at least three times. There were a couple of gripes about how hard he was working them. A couple of people were driving this. The players were caught in the middle of this."

And Emerick's coaching career seemed to be over.

"Within three months, I came home," said Emerick, who returned to his family farm near Peoria, Ill. "We put the crops in the ground that spring.

"I didn't really want to be around coaching after that. It took a few months to get that bad taste out of my mouth."

The Montana Supreme Court granted the university's motion to dismiss Emerick's reinstatement case in August 2001, the last legal action related to Emerick's time at MSU-Northern.

From the ashes?

Eventually, the bad taste went away.

During his time away from the bench, he ran a company called Emerick Athletic Consulting that assisted high schools and small colleges with gender equity issues.

"I missed coaching, I really missed coaching," Emerick said. "It's one of the only things I'm really good at.

"I turned down a couple of jobs this spring -- head coaching jobs. I was looking for a good assistants position where I could try to start over and relearn. This is a good job at a good place and those kind of opportunities are rare."

Southeast officials believe they have a good fit in Emerick.

"We're glad to have him," Kaverman said. "I consider us to be fortunate to hire someone of his experience and maturity.

"We want to make sure we hire people of good character, people of integrity, good role models for our players," Kaverman added. "I spent a lot of time with him myself, and I'm confident. What was compelling to me was the guy he worked for [Spatkowski]. That tells me a lot right there."

Smith also was convinced. He has Emerick working to help players develop their offensive skills.

"We spent two days with him," Smith said. "He interacted well, not only with people on the basketball staff. His basketball knowledge is as good as anyone we brought on campus.

"Being a former head coach, he knows how to teach things and he knows the things that have to be done."

Emerick, ready to move on, said he's not sure how he could have avoided any of the events that took place in his past.

"I couldn't control anything until the end, until I asked to date the former player," Emerick said.

But that would hardly qualify as a regret. Emerick became divorced after leaving MSU-Northern and is now engaged to Fabatz, who coached high school basketball last year in Illinois and is serving as a manager for the Southeast women's team this year.

Emerick is not surprised the past revisits him. He won't be surprised if ESPN or some other media outlet calls him again.

There are those in his past who make sure it's not forgotten, and there are those such as Spatkowski and Schumpert who believe Emerick has paid his dues.

"I just think the world of him," Schumpert said. "He's organized, he's smart, he's honest with people. The story ought to be about his ability to overcome this stuff. This ought to be about his perseverance and staying after it."

Emerick hopes the story people in Cape Girardeau remember will be a more positive experience than his recent coaching jobs.

"I think there's a lot of misinformation available to anybody who wants to go looking for it," Emerick said. "Every day, I just show up and teach the players and try to give us a chance to beat Oklahoma."

That chance comes Nov. 19 in Southeast's season opener.