News & Articles

Ever since UMD athletic director Josh Berlo informed women’s hockey coach Shannon Miller in December that the contracts of her entire staff would not be renewed, the college on the hill has been making some confident moves to beef up its treatment of female coaches and staff.

Miller and her two assistants, and team administrator Jen Banford, who doubled as softball coach, all were cut adrift. UMD said publicly it hoped Banford would continue as softball coach, but her contractual offer had changed, and she resigned. Banford was named Northern Sun softball coach of the year in 2013, a year in which the late winter prevented UMD from playing a single home game, if my memory is correct. And if it is, then it might be interesting to see if there has ever been a softball coach named coach of the year without a single home game.

At any rate, a few months later, women’s basketball coach Annette Wiles resigned, saying she had been so completely shunned, cut off and cut out of any staff interaction, that she was resigning.

The one link among all five of those female coaches is that they all are gay.
There are those connected with the UMD athletic department who have never been heard to utter a positive word about women’s hockey -- never mind those five NCAA Division I championships -- and they felt no pain with the dismissal of Miller and her staff.

But as this summer of turmoil bubbled on toward fall, the feeling remained that we had not heard the end of this.

   What we heard on Monday was the official filing of a lawsuit by Miller, Banford and Wiles in U.S. District Court, aimed at the governing University of Minnesota regents, focusing on their belief they were discriminated against because they are women, and gay, in violation of Title IX legal standards.

UMD Chancellor Lendley Black issued a statement, saying UMD’s decisions were made in the best interests of UMD.

The legal team representing the deposed coaches includes Dan Siegel as lead attorney. Siegel, from California, is working in conjunction with an Eden Prairie law office as an expert at dealing with cases of discrimination and violations of Title IX, which is the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination at institutions that receive federal funding. Siegel obtained over $24.9 million in settlements from Fresno State University in similar legal action in the past decade.

When asked how he sees the case of the UMD coaches in comparison, Siegel said: “These cases, on merit, are the strongest I’ve ever seen regarding Title IX.”

Siegel also said that the evidence indicates that UMD is in the process of conducting a purge of female coaches, and he described Berlo as an “equal opportunity bigot.” He also said that his staff is investigating circumstances at Notre Dame, where Berlo was an administrator before being hired by UMD, and said that he anticipates their investigation “will be fruitful.”

Miller, at the press conference, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune she had experienced some indications of discrimination in past years, such as having mail taken from her office mailbox, and that someone had taken her nameplate off the door to her office and replaced it with a sign that said: “Dyke.”
 
But the feeling of hostility escalated, she indicated, when Josh Berlo was hired as athletic director in 2013, culminated when he approached her in December of last season and asked her to resign, before telling Miller he was not going to renew the contracts of the four-person staff. At the time, UMD was in a pre-Christmas hot streak that included, Miller said, winning 12 of 13 games and rising to contention in the WCHA and a top 10 national ranking.

Berlo said, publicly, that the move was based solely on UMD’s inability to pay Miller $207,000 a year salary, making her the most highly paid coach in women’s college hockey. I asked Berlo two main questions at the time: 1. Why make the decision at midseason instead of waiting until the end of the season? And 2. Did Berlo ever offer Miller a reduced salary or ask Miller if she would negotiate to take a reduced salary? He said that contractual limitations forced him to make the move when he did, and that Miller’s contract allowed no such negotiations.

A few days after that interview, I interviewed Miller, who denied that she had any clause that forced the decision to be made in midseason. She said she had informed Chancellor Lendley Black and Berlo that she would meet with them to discuss renegotiating her contract.

“I was anticipating we would meet to talk about it,” Miller said in a January interview. “We just won 12 of 13 games; in those circumstances, you don’t expect to get called in for termination.”

UMD Blows 18-Point Lead, Still Wins 28-24

Nothing seems to be coming easily to this fall’s UMD football Bulldogs. They cosldn’t even seem to get Mother Nature to look kindly on them last Saturday, when quarterback Drew Bauer had to simplify the Bulldog offense by simply by hanging onto the ball himself.

Stung by losses at Minnesota State-Mankato and Sioux Falls in their first and third games, the Bulldogs were looking ahead to a day that was supposed to be clear, with temperatures in the high 60s, for their return home to face Upper Iowa.

Instead, the Bulldogs got 50-degree chill and a dense fog that pretty much covered the entire city of Duluth, but for sure settled on Malosky Stadium. Rarely have you seen a game at Malosky where a pass, or a punt, rose from the playing surface and simply disappeared into the thick fog.
UMD did defeat Upper Iowa 28-24 to even off their record at 2-2, but if that score seems scary-close, consider that the Bulldogs led 18-0 at halftime. If that indicated their offense had literally come in out of the fog, it immediately went deeper into the fog in the second half.

They got pretty thoroughly outplayed, as the Peacocks (Peacocks?) took over the game, made the big plays, and took advantage of UMD mistakes to turn a potential blowout into a tight game – actually taking a 24-21 lead as the fourth quarter ticked off.

Quarterback Bauer, who lost ace running back Logan Lauters to a first-half injury, took matters into his own hands. Again. Late in the fourth quarter, Bauer connected with Beau Bofferding for a 51-yard play to put UMD within reach of the end zone, but it took three plays to score from the 3, with Bauer finally finding Ben McDonald with a touchdown pass with 3:39 remaining.

That vaulted UMD back into the lead, at 28-24, and the beleaguered UMD defense had to come up with a spirited stop to prevent Upper Iowa from going home victorious.

Neither team used the fog as an excuse, but for the 4,120 fans rumored to be in the seats, keeping track of the ball was a major chore. On the field, where players seemed to be under the blanket of fog, deception was the word of the day, but it affected both teams whether on offense or defense. So instead of handing off, Bauer found it easier, and certainly more effective, to keep the ball.

Bauer carried himself 24 times, gain107 yards and a touchdown, and he passed 14 for 26 for 272 yards and two more touchdowns.
Bauer’s 117 yards made him UMD and the game’s leading rusher, even outdistancing Peacocks star freshman Derrick Portis, who carried 18 times for 107 yards. Portis gained 78 of those yards on two explosive runs in the fourth quarter to lift Upper Iowa into the lead -- a 45-yard run that lifted his team to a 21-16 deficit, then going 33 yards to score for a 24-21 Peacocks lead.

Bauer, who passed 18 yards to Justin Fowlkes in the first quarter for a 7-0 UMD lead, plunged 2 yards in the second quarter to make it 15-0, and a 41-yard field goal by Andrew Brees made it 18-0.

It didn’t seem that the Bulldogs would need some true heroics in the second half to finish the victory.

This Saturday, UMD hits the road again, going to Minnesota State-Moorhead, where they might rank as heavy favorites. But the Dragons stand 3-1, and if their scouting report shows any indications of how UMD is thin on depth and defense, they could be inspired for a rare upset at the Bulldogs expense. That fits in with the season’s scheme -- nothing is going to come easy for UMD.