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", And it is the same, she says, with Coach. And then one day Corey was back. None of those assistant coaches are going to speak up because they're all hired by the head coach, and family comes first. (Photo by Jacob Snow/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images). Elliot's Blog; Podcast; Featured Promotions; On-Air. Thats what happens when you play for a program where when you fail, you are immediately benched. The school has hired the Birmingham, Alabama, law firm of Lightfoot, Franklin & White to investigate the program. "Are you here for a social visit or are you still writing a story? He wasn't just a successful coach and teacher; he was a transformational one who, in the words of ESPN softball analyst and two-time Olympic softball gold medalist Michele Smith, did "something almost unprecedented -- he made average players good players and good players great ones. I could not have suspected, much less known, what they, even then, had to know -- that the very dream I extolled would, within the space of days, be broken and that the bastion of simple joy I described would, before the next season began, lay in ruins, with their coaches disgraced, their athletic director resigned in the wake of scandal and investigation, and two of the players on the bus shunned by their teammates. Auburn hasnt drawn a walk in the last four SEC games. They didn't have "reputations." He has a story to tell, he says. He was happy to be found "non-responsible." And second, they were playing amazing softball. Athletics. You didn't know everything, but you knew enough.". And the Myerses have protected the Myerses, never once admitting wrongdoing. Softball Schedule Roster News. "I hate people," she said for effect, but also with something like resignation. Auburn Softball: Tigers beat Texas A&M to open SEC play I do not think she is right, because trauma is as opportunistic as it is tenacious and as unruly as it is unpredictable -- and because no matter who else forgets about what happened that year in the Auburn softball program, she will always remember. He was telling them now that their difficulties were a problem of perception. But they were men. "Everybody protected Coach," Haley Fagan says. Clint Myers was hired under ASU's Love and departed under her successor, Steve Patterson, and both Love and Patterson told Outside the Lines that no one from Auburn contacted them to discuss Myers or his son ahead of hiring him. He finished his NCAA career with 4,082 passing yards and 24 touchdown passes. 7 seed Missouri. They were not defending Corey. ", Grant tops Corpuz by 3 strokes for first LPGA win, Annie Park leads Dana Open; Corpuz tied for 2nd, Mystics, a 'bit snakebit,' see Atkins (ankle) exit, Tennessee-Indiana headlines Fort Myers Tip-Off, Corpuz rockets to No. Reach Tom Junod at Thomas.C.Junod@espn.com. Her faith that softball is about joy-when she is well aware of what else it can be about-is precisely as resilient as she is, indeed one of the wellsprings of her resilience, as is her love of Auburn and her love of Clint Myers. Investigators found issues relating to improper recruiting of baseball players and paying student athletes for work not performed, and noted there was "a cavalier attitude on the part of the former head baseball coach to NCAA regulations. "I wrote a letter saying that I didn't believe all that was being said, because I wanted to defend my coach," one former Auburn player told ESPN. But as he was growing old, he was not just, in his words, "mellowing," but becoming so familiar and downright cute that some of his players treated him like a mascot and called him Coachie. And at that moment, I understood that all his talk of family was not merely motivational rhetoric or even manipulative subterfuge. But what was on the screen? Or he might not. They are all dressed identically, in Auburn orange and Auburn blue, and they are all wearing hats indoors. And, of course, I hear in her speech a disquieting echo of the speech I made on the bus ride to Florida, before I knew what I knew. A little over a year ago, I gave a speech to the Auburn Tigers softball team. In the first game at Florida, the Tigers took a lead into the seventh and then lost on two unearned runs after a dropped fly ball; in the second game, they sagged and surrendered as soon as Florida pitcher Kelly Barnhill released her first 70 mph rise ball with her signature scream. Coach was, in his own words, "an arrogant prick, self-proclaimed" as a young man, and certainly Corey had some of that belligerent arrogance about him, combined with the almost pleading insecurity of an heir. The losses divided the team along what I took to be conventional lines -- between the self-described gamers who wanted Coach to reclaim some of his old arrogance and chew them out, and the polite Southern girls who wanted to spend time with their parents in the hotel lobby. My softball story was to be about joy, and yet the team as a whole exuded an atmosphere of toil and trouble, especially when it started losing. But she is emphatic on one point: It's not her story if it doesn't include the good things that happened as well as the bad, because she's been shaped by the good things as well as the bad. Swimming & Diving (W) Schedule Roster News. Sure, Auburn has protected Auburn, never telling the truth unless forced to admit it and delaying the release of cherry-picked documents and responding to the first published allegations about the softball program with the promise of a "comprehensive review" that has never been mentioned again. "She broke down for us appropriate, inappropriate places for him to be. Who is in the wrong here? She is telling her story in the Mexican restaurant because she wants people to know what happened to her at Auburn. For the past two hours she has told me a story about softball, but their story is just beginning, and I can only pray that it ends differently from hers and that they learn the secret within the game without having to endure what she did-the secrets within the game. She suffered playing softball but keeps coming back to softball, coaching a team of 8-year-olds. Former Auburn head softball coach Clint Myers, who left the program in August amid allegations his son and assistant coach Corey Myers engaged in inappropriate behavior with players, was . I spoke from the heart, as a softball dad who saw, in the young women sitting in rows before me, the fulfillment of my fond wish for my own child. That issue was addressed in the letter Love sent to Clint Myers, which stated that without prior approval, no active student athlete might live in any property owned by an ASU athletics employee or family member or be employed by them. Auburn Softball hires Hannah Sparks as assistant coach. It was all about power, and all verbal and emotional. "I am so SICK AND TIRED of you people belittling athletes especially MY CARLEE when you have NO IDEA OF WHAT WENT ON," Ellis said. Nobody protected us.". When the dust settled,. Corey Myers could not be reached for comment. "It is sad when a young girl who has played the sport for 18 years of her 22-year life hasno interest or desire in playing a 5th year. How could he not know what his son was doing, and how could she be so sure that he didn't? Nemeth, contacted for her response to the news of Clint Myers' retirement, said that she feels "vindicated." And then I asked him a question about Corey's connection to the isolated player always on her phone. Auburn softball coach Mickey Dean has seen his team hit just .144 over the last 11 SEC games, while scoring just 14 runs in that time. Some of the players even wrote letters to the athletic department on his behalf. Auburn's only other base runners reached on a walk and Clemson error in the early frames. His father had chosen him as his successor; Corey was, after all, a father and a husband himself and now worked as associate head coach. 17 Auburn softball (39-15) fell . It was a power that seemed to discomfit and dismay him -- "they tend to cry when they come to my office. The review is ongoing. I love Auburn with my whole heart and every single girl that is part of the Auburn softball program," McCondichie said on Twitter. I am, to a degree -- even though most of the players who played for Clint won't talk to me. McCondichie is leaving the program after four seasons and it's largely due to Dean and the coaching staff. The team flew directly from Arkansas to College Station, Texas after scoring three runs total in three-game sweep so head coach Mickey Dean and players wont hold their typical midweek press availability. Indeed, Casey had been working as a minor league coach and Corey as a coach for the Birmingham Bolts, a softball travel team that functions as the source for much of Auburn's roster, when Coach left Arizona State and came with his wife, Katie, to "the loveliest village on the Plains," between Atlanta and Montgomery. Former Auburn softball utility player Carlee McCondichie took to Twitter on Sunday to express her frustrations with the university's softball program and why she would not be using a fifth year of eligibility to play for the Tigers. And I wish I could say that after my speech the players welcomed me to their privileged place in the back of the bus, the environs they occupied with an armament of personal electronics and a DVD of "Zoolander" and a border between front and back they'd electrified with an inviolable awareness of their own distinction. '", It was March 24, 2017, and Clint Myers was at that time possibly the greatest, maybe the most famous and definitely the most recognizable coach in college softball. A physics major, she came prepared; she did not feel that the coaches had treated her fairly or given her enough opportunity, so she brought a contract for them to sign. She was overmatched and knew it, and to give herself courage, she began singing a Beyonce song. She's telling me now because she's learned that it's her story to tell, and she's hoping that I'll learn something from it about Auburn, about Meredith Jenkins, about Clint Myers and about herself and her friend -- that they were not and are not to blame. You've heard -- of course you've heard -- that there is no crying in baseball? A teammate took her phone and then took pictures of the text messages between her and Corey. Tennis (W) Schedule Roster News. Auburn rallies, beats Georgia 4-3 in WCWS - USA TODAY They did not call him Coachie, but rarely did they call him Dad. What could be on the screen?