‘I don’t want to be ashamed to be a Vandal’

Three weeks into the season, hope seemed lost. Three weeks into the season, the alleged abuse started waving its red flag. Three weeks into the season, she wondered if she wanted to quit.  

A player from the 2023-24 University of Idaho women’s volleyball team shared her personal experience and accounts of the alleged abuse from Head Coach Chris Gonzalez with the Argonaut. The scandal made headlines initially in the Orange County Register in late December, when several anonymous and named volleyball members told their stories to the California news outlet.  

They detailed physical, emotional and mental abuse. They detailed their experiences on and off the court with Gonzalez, a former Olympic volleyball coach who has had 15 coaching positions in 21 years.  

One player decided to tell her story as a Vandal, as someone who hopes and desires to stay a Vandal. She told the Argonaut that she saw the signs three weeks into her time as a Vandal athlete. The Argonaut granted her anonymity in telling her story, because of the sensitive nature of the issue and an ongoing investigation into the matter by UI.  

After spending her freshman and sophomore years at a different college, the former Idaho assistant coaching staff recruited the player. She had little to no interaction with Gonzalez before signing to the university and arriving in Moscow for summer training. A few weeks after her initial commitment, the assistant coaching staff, those who she had interacted with, and learned about the program from, left.  

She says she almost never saw Gonzalez during summer training. The season seemed bright and hopeful. She had made the leap, crossed the river from a junior college to a NCAA Division I school. She was ready for the competition to rise exponentially. She was prepared for higher expectations, for grueling training. She was ready to be a Vandal.  

All that changed after the team’s third tournament of the 2023 season. The Idaho volleyball players travelled to Edwardsville, Illinois, where they would reach a record of 1-9 (The team’s record over the last two years in 5-51). She said that Gonzalez put Idaho in this tournament to win. He thought they would win these games, and then they didn’t.  

“He freaked out on us on the bench,” the player said. “He took us aside and threw the line up at us and said ‘I don’t even know who wants to f— play.’ It kind of felt like at that point he had given up on us.”  

Hope wanes  

The Sept. 8-9 tournament was the moment this player’s vision for the season blurred red. She could only see warning signs, signs to leave, after that moment. A coach she barely knew, barely interacted with, gave up hope three weeks in, she said.   

“I’ve played the game for 14 years, and I’ve never had a coach behave like that. And I’ve had some hard a– coaches,” she said.  

The signs and alleged abuse became ever more frequent as the season went on, as the losses piled up and the players became exhausted. She said after the team traveled to Northern Arizona University on Sept. 23, Gonzalez held a team meeting. This was nothing out of the ordinary. However, at this meeting Gonzalez reportedly proceeded to show a failure montage video of a single player, a video of mistake after mistake one player made.   

The player said the team has an audio recording of this meeting. The NAU incident motivated players to approach administration. They brought forward audio recordings, video evidence and, as the player put it, an approximately 26-page long document that details any and all accounts of physical, mental and emotional abuse they allegedly were victims of at the hands of Gonzalez.  

After team captains approached members of the University of Idaho administration in September 2023, among them the athletic director Terry Gawlik, another team meeting ensued. The player told the Argonaut that Gonzalez verbally threatened them, saying he heard what the players said about him and told them to stop lying. The player said everything brought to the university was “absolutely the truth.”  

Knowing that their formal complaints, ones dating back to November 2022 when a parent of a former player sent a letter to Gawlik, according to the Orange County Register, were reaching Gonzalez’s ears, the players felt hesitant to reach out to the university for help.  

Afraid of retaliation  

The player said fear infiltrated every practice, game, meeting and scouting session Gonzalez was at. They didn’t know what he was going to threaten, who he was going to bench, who he was going to make play through an injury or what he heard they reported on him. Silence seemingly ensued.  

Players were afraid to say no. The player told the Argonaut she had a teammate officially on the injured list, and therefore not cleared to play in a game. The trainer walked away from the bench during the game and Gonzalez subsequently subbed in the injured player, leading to further and more damaging injuries, according to the player interviewed. 

Practices started being led by players. Gonzalez asked the players to draw up practice plans and conduct drills for their three-hour practice period while the coaching staff did drills off to the side, the player said. When he was participating in coaching, it led to many players feeling uncomfortable.  

“Good girl” comments were made after a successful play, a statement the player said they told him was not okay.  

Gonzalez allegedly lifted the player by the hips during a blocking drill and proceeded to say “That took a lot more to get you up there than I thought,” the player said. She referred to comments and actions such as these as a way for Gonzalez to “belittle them” and “assert his dominance as a male.”  

The player said that Gonzalez would repeatedly refer to a way he knew would fix their problems, but it wasn’t a punishment allowed under NCAA guidelines. The coach, who spent many years as an international coach, used this as an “open handed threat” that lingered in the players’ minds, the player said.   

When travelling to games, the coaching staff would drive the vans that transported the players. The player said there is video evidence of an assistant coach speeding and then getting pulled over by police on two separate occasions, instances the player said they were to keep a secret from Gonzalez.  

The stories and accounts this player detailed to the Argonaut are the same stories and accounts brought to the university, the player said. But, in her perspective, the appropriate support and action is not being taken. She is afraid that if Gonzalez is allowed to stay in this position, he could clear the roster for a third time.  

“Wiping” the roster  

“It felt like they (the coaches) thought ‘you’re not who I thought you were as a player so let me belittle you into leaving,’” the player said. “He’s wiped his house twice now. He wiped it in 2022, and right now there’s six girls practicing.”  

The player said that from an 18-person roster, only six players returned in the spring of 2023. Out of the 2023 fall roster, only six are currently practicing, five of which are international players. The player said there was a line that divided “domestics and internationals” and Gonzalez supposedly did nothing to erase it.  

The player went to one week of practices in support of the international players who decided to return, as she felt the foreign players deserved the opportunity to attend university in the United States. However, after seeing how “beyond fake” Gonzalez began acting now that a case manager, Beth Ropski, attends, she couldn’t return. The Argonaut contacted Ropski, Gonzalez and Gawlik for this story, but all declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.  

UI ensures scholarships  

In a memo sent out by President Scott Green on Jan. 19, the players can choose not to attend practice without fear of losing their scholarship. The player said their scholarships are renewed every academic year, meaning that they are ensured their scholarship through May even if they don’t practice, but they have no guarantee their scholarship will be waiting for them for the 2024-25 season. They don’t know if Gonzalez will be allowed to coach for the final year of his three-year contract.   

The player is apprehensive that the university is trying to “cover it up” and “sweep it under the rug” so that they don’t have to deal with the payment legalities associated with ending a contract. She said she hopes the university won’t side with Gonzalez and wait out his three-year contract.   

Gonzalez signed a three-year contract that extends from Jan. 18, 2022 and ends on Dec. 29 of this year, with an annual salary of $90,001.60.   

His contract reads, “In the event of termination for good or adequate cause, the University’s obligation to provide compensation and benefits to Coach, whether direct, indirect, supplemental or collateral, shall cease as the date of such termination, and the University shall not be liable for the loss of any collateral business opportunities for other benefits perquisites, or income resulting from outside activities or from any other sources.”  

The player said she and others are concerned that since Gonzalez’s contract only extends until Dec. 29, it could influence the outcome of the investigation and subsequent decision by the university.  

“A lot of them (international players) don’t know any better. These girls are coming from third world countries that are used to this type of behavior. They are coming from a place where they can’t speak up. They are coming from a place where women don’t have any rights. They don’t have a voice,” the player said. “So he (Gonzalez) is bringing them here, isolating them alone and treating them the exact same way, if not worse. That’s not okay.”  

Disappointed with Athletic Director  

The player said she has been disappointed with the response from the university, namely Gawlik. The player referenced Gawlik’s 14-year career as the designated senior woman administrator at the University of Wisconsin, a job in which Gawlik “managed and monitored the Wisconsin Athletic Department’s strategic plans and its policies and decision-making processes, including gender equity and diversity issues, coaching staff evaluations, recommendations and contract extensions. Gawlik also oversaw the department’s implementation and compliance with policies and procedures regarding Title IX, gender equity, diversity and sexual assault and violence training,” according to her University of Idaho biography.  

She felt like Gawlik especially should have stood up for the volleyball team because of her previous work at the University of Wisconsin.   

“I thought a woman in authority would have our back. She should protect her female athletes,” she said.  

“It feels like the school is just trying to cover it up,” the player said. “I understand, at this point, the investigation has to go on, but we don’t feel like we are being supported at all by the authorities or the administration. What Scott Green sent out, what Terry has said, it doesn’t feel like a genuine ‘we care about our athletes’ at all.’”  

Green memo ineffective  

The player said the memo sent out to students from Green on Jan. 19 was eerily similar to the one the players received from Gawlik earlier in the year.  

“We had to take this to a news source in California to be heard. It’s not like we didn’t try to be heard here at the university first. Emails were sent to President Green. Terry had been informed about this. We went to OCRI here. We filed harassment claims here. None of it came to light until the Orange County piece came out,” the player said. 

The player conceded that the team did ask for the investigation to be placed on hold until after they finished the 2023 season because “we were scared of retaliation. We just wanted to finish the season out.”  

The results of the investigation will heavily influence this player, and many others, decision to return to the university in the fall.  

“I want my degree to say University of Idaho,” she said. “I don’t want to be ashamed to be a Vandal.”  

A petition on change.org has reached 534 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon calling for the dismissal of Gonzalez. A separate petition calling for Gonzalez to be fired has reached 318 signatures.  

“This will make or break the volleyball program,” the player said.  

Joanna Hayes can be reached at [email protected]