HONOLULU — Hawaii Pacific University has fired women’s basketball coach Reid Takatsuka about five months after placing him on leave to investigate allegations of mistreatment of his players, Spectrum News has learned.
The move marked the formal end of a tenure of unprecedented on-court success for the Sharks, who are now searching for a new head coach after a season of division and disarray.
Takatsuka, a five-time Pacific West Conference Coach of the Year, confirmed to Spectrum News last week that he was fired without severance pay. He declined further comment.
Athletic director Debbie Snell forwarded an emailed request for comment on Takatsuka’s firing and the season’s issues to Stephen Ward, HPU vice president of communications and marketing.
Ward told Spectrum News in an email: “(On April 15), Hawai‘i Pacific University terminated Women’s Basketball Head Coach Reid Takatsuka following a lengthy independent investigation into allegations related to the treatment of student athletes. The investigation confirmed a pattern of conduct that violated university policy and was contrary to the University’s values of aloha, pono, and kuleana.”
Sources told Spectrum News the allegations did not involve physical or sexual abuse of the players. HPU later said “mental and verbal abuse” was included in the allegations.
“Definitely surprised and saddened to hear about this,” said Cal State Fullerton women’s basketball coach Jeff Harada, Takatsuka’s former boss at HPU who turned the program over to him in 2011. “Reid has put his heart and soul into his coaching and made HPU Women’s Basketball a nationally recognized program. To see his time there end this way doesn’t seem real.”
Spectrum News interviewed five players on the 2021-22 team, including three who spoke on a condition of anonymity. All expressed frustrations with how the season played out.
HPU’s women’s basketball appeared poised for another season of conference contention in 2021-22 behind returning All-America guard Amy Baum and some talented transfers. It got off to a 4-2 start.
But a divide within the team about how – and how hard – it was coached manifested in allegations of favoritism from a faction of players and culminated with Snell meeting with the team just before its home game against Point Loma on Dec. 2. Snell informed the players of Takatsuka’s suspension and that assistant coach McKenzie Mangino would be taking over. Players described it as the most shocking moment of a season unlike anything they’d experienced.
The Sharks, winners of 20 or more games over each of the previous four seasons, lost 13 straight games from that moment.
Mangino’s coaching tenure lasted all of two games, both losses, before HPU men’s coach Darren Vorderbruegge was tapped to coach out the rest of the season on an interim basis.
Divisions within the team intensified after the first coaching change was made. A handful of players, including Baum, left the team at midseason, and HPU finished 9-18 overall and 6-14 in the PacWest.
Takatsuka got results consistently from the time he stepped in for his first collegiate head-coaching job. He entered the 2021-22 season with a winning percentage of .763 (209-65) over 10 seasons.
A source close to the situation told Spectrum News that the allegations included inconsistent treatment of players, like the length of suspensions for infractions, and an incident of cussing in the weight room. Another involved an alleged joke at a player’s expense.
The players Spectrum News spoke to said Takatsuka coached them hard. Most defended his methods. One player who spoke to Spectrum News agreed with the allegations of bias toward players and unfair treatment. However, that player said that divisions within the team got worse after the suspension as “morale was not good. It felt like a huge weight and tension.” Players took out their frustrations on each other.
Bree Mackenzie, an Australian who played for Takatsuka at HPU from 2014 to 2019 and subsequently became part of his coaching staff, said she left the program out of loyalty to Takatsuka once he was placed on leave at the start of December.
“There were absolutely never any ill actions toward any players. Any ill feelings. I would put everything on standing by that,” Mackenzie said. “I was with him as a player, I was with him as a coach. Practices, games, meetings. He was respectful, professional.”
Players said that complaints arose after a practice in which a series of tough sprints were demanded.
Freshman forward/guard Jordyn Jensen of Reno, Nev., said she joined the program because she expected a demanding coach. He’d also reach out to check on their well-being frequently, she said.
She noted he told them all upon entering the program that he would be a demanding coach and that ‘my favorite player is whoever’s playing the best.’”
“His methods and how tough he is on us, it works,” Jensen said. “I was honestly looking forward to that in the program. I enjoy being pushed to be the best that I can be. I was ready for that hard-working environment, and to get that taken by some people with complaints about him, I didn’t think that was fair to me or any of the other girls.”
Asked by Spectrum News about Takatsuka’s coaching style, Mackenzie acknowledged he had high expectations for his players, but that he also cared about their post-college careers.
“Those expectations were just for the best basketball out of each athlete. He expected us to perform. He expected us to put forth our best effort as we could,” she said. “Uphold that legacy that he had created with previous athletes and previous coaches.”
HPU said its president, John Gotanda, has met with other HPU coaches regarding the Takatsuka incident and that Provost Jennifer Walsh and Snell offered to meet with student-athletes.
During the Takatsuka investigation, counter criticism was directed at Snell, a former star basketball player at the University of Arkansas who is in her first year with the Sharks program.
Players on both sides of the issue of Takatsuka’s coaching style expressed displeasure to Spectrum News with the AD’s handling of the season, including two who separately called the Point Loma pre-game suspension of Takatsuka for then-unexplained reasons “unprofessional.”
Some players said they did not feel supported after going to human resources and spoke of a lack of empathy for their mental health in a difficult situation. Snell threatened to have their scholarship removed if they did not play out the season, two said.
Forward Julia Razo transferred into HPU from Dominican University, also of the PacWest Conference, for her graduate season after seeing firsthand Takatsuka’s coaching and results.
Razo said she was furious after Takatsuka’s suspension and faked an illness in the aftermath so she didn’t have to play; she eventually returned to play out the season as the best move for her future. She said the lack of explanation to the public for Takatsuka’s suspension over the last five months left the players fielding questions frequently about whether they were mistreated physically or sexually. She was adamant that they were not.
“To put it really bluntly, it’s (messed) up,” said Razo, who used an expletive. “The athletic administration and university has been very neglecting, I would say, in how we student athletes have felt. … I wrote a whole letter to numerous people from the university and athletics on my frustrations with the situation and why I didn’t understand how this is being navigated, and honestly why Debbie shouldn’t be the athletic director at any university, especially at HPU anymore.”
Jenson took ownership of one of the allegations against Takatsuka, in which they met up for a golf outing with two other people. Jenson, an avid golfer new to the islands, said she initiated the event and Takatsuka only agreed to go if they did not talk basketball.
“I think that they completely tarnished the man’s livelihood and his name,” Jensen said. “He’s an amazing coach, and for them to make all these allegations that were basically false and more than half of the team went in to back Coach Reid, it was crazy that he even got fired.”
As part of its emailed response to Spectrum News, HPU made clear it backs Snell, a former athletic director at Holy Names University who was hired by HPU in May 2021 to oversee its 14-team department. Former AD Sam Moku joined Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s new staff at Honolulu Hale in January.
“Subsequent counter allegations against the university’s executive director of Athletics were found by the independent investigator not to be substantiated, and the HPU Administration fully supports Athletics Director Dr. Debbie Snell in this matter,” Ward wrote. “The decisions Debbie Snell has taken as our executive director of Athletics over the course of her first year are the decisions we would expect anyone in this leadership role to have taken. The situations that prompted those decisions are coincidental to Dr. Snell being here, not because she is here.”
Mackenzie, the assistant who left when Takatsuka was suspended, said a few more players left right after the season once their scholarship and visa eligibility requirements were met. Jensen, despite her differences with the handling of the situation, is among the players who intend to return.
Takatsuka, of Kaneohe, is a former head coach at Hawaii Baptist Academy, his alma mater. He joined Jeff Harada’s staff at HPU in 2008 and after Harada left to be an assistant at Navy, he built upon established success. HPU rose to unprecedented heights over the past decade, including four straight years of 20-win seasons from 2016 to 2020. HPU had a top-five national ranking and 29-1 record in 2020, and was about to host an NCAA Division II tournament regional for the first time when the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancelation of the postseason.
HPU won three PacWest regular-season championships and four PacWest tournament championships in Takatsuka’s tenure.
“All the years he’s been there I haven’t heard one negative thing about him,” Harada said. “Does he coach his players hard? He probably does, and that’s why they play hard for him. You don’t achieve what he has year in and year out if the players aren’t on the same page and bought in. That’s why hearing this is so hard to comprehend.”
Two weeks ago, Kent Glover, a current member of the HPU men’s cross country team, started a petition on change.org to remove Snell as athletic director. As of Wednesday, it had garnered 277 signatures.
In his accompanying post, Glover wrote, “Each team has individual problems with Dr. Snell but overarching themes include unequal treatment, sudden coach removal, and lack of support of any kind.”
HPU said in response to a Spectrum News inquiry about the petition, “Online petitions should always be read with a big grain of salt, given that they attract many signatures from people without any connection to the perceived issues the petition’s authors believe they are addressing. Specific to the petition related to Dr. Snell, it’s based on a significant misunderstanding of the basis for the dismissal of the former coach.”
But Mackenzie said the petition spoke to a wider problem within HPU athletics. Sharks players also noted a similar petition was circulated at Holy Names, Snell's last stop.
“People aren’t being heard. It’s this one person in charge, and if you don’t want to follow their lead, then you’re out,” she said. “It’s bullying, threatening – it’s just a toxic environment.”
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.