Women and Sports in the United States: A Documentary Reader

SEX, LIES, AND VOLLEYBALL

246 WOMEN AND SPORTS IN THE UNITED STATES y SEX, LIES, AND VOLLEYBALL Cynthia Hanson When she was 15, Julie Bremner already had the long, lean muscles of an athlete and the competitive fire of a champion. As a freshman at St. Francis High School in Wheaton, her most urgent dream was to make the St. Francis varsity volleyball team. To better her chances, she followed in the sneakerprints of many a champion before her: She tried out for Sports Performance Volleyball, a West Chicago amateur athletics club widely regarded as the best in the nation. That was 1984. Bremner made the team, and inside of a year was well on her way to stardom. Still touted as one of the finest athletes ever to play in the program, she was named Reebok National High School Co-Player of the Year for 1987, and took a full ride to Notre Dame. She left after just a semester for a two-year stint with the women’s national team, then transferred to UCLA, where she led the Bruins to the 1991 NCAA championship . But throughout her volleyball career, Bremner says, she harbored a humiliating secret: For a year and a half, beginning when she was 17, she had slept with Sports Performance coach and founder Rick Butler. For 15 years now, 41-year-old Rick Butler has enjoyed unmatched success as a girls’ volleyball coach. His program, which is primarily geared to teaching teenagers the fundamentals of competitive volleyball, has produced more winning teams and more college scholarships for its participants than almost any other women’s sports program in the United States. Since Sports Performance’s inception in 1980, its girls’ teams have won 28 national titles, and Butler has even sent a handful of players to the women’s national team and the pro beach circuit. His methods— which center on militaristic regimen and the notion that girls can and should compete as seriously as boys—have gained him more fans than detractors. “Rick has developed the premier junior program in the country,” says Doug Beal of the U.S. Volleyball Association, the sport’s national governing body. Beal, who coached the gold-medal men’s team at the Los Angeles Olympics , is organizing a U.S. pro men’s league. Butler, who was an assistant to From Chicago 45:2 (February 1996): 56–63. the men’s Olympic team in Barcelona in 1992, was asked to coach the Chicago franchise, and, Beal says, is perpetually on the short list for the Olympic staff. But in 1994, when Bremner blurted her secret to a therapist in Los Angeles , Butler’s high-flying career began a downward arc. Within a few months of her revelation, two more former players came forward and made similar allegations before the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and the volleyball association. All three women described a “coaching couch” process in which he identified them as stars, invited them to private training sessions, and eventually pushed them into sex. In remarkably similar language, each accused Butler of having abused his power and exploited her dreams. Each said that she had submitted to Butler because she believed he controlled her future, and eventually, because she thought he loved her. As one of the women said at the hearings that would follow, “I truly believed that I needed him, that I would have nothing but a wasted life without him. I feared he would take everything away if I didn’t do what he wanted.” By last July, Rick Butler and his coaching program were at the center of a maelstrom, and by the end of the month, the U.S. Volleyball Association had revoked Butler’s membership—a necessity for any coach who wants to compete seriously on a national level. Butler lost an administrative appeal, but on January second, filed a lawsuit against the association seeking damages in excess of $1 million. He says he “dated” all three of his accusers—but only after they had turned 18 (the age of sexual consent in Illinois when one party is in a position of trust, authority, or supervision over the other) and left the program. He blames the entire mess on a grudge match with his former business partner, Kay Rogness, who helped the women find each other and present their case. Dozens of parents have rallied to support Butler. Pat Kennedy of Barrington Hills, whose husband owns the Chicago franchise for the...