HONOLULU — A group of parents of student-athletes at Hawaii Pacific University are taking public their concerns about what they call the “negligent” behavior of HPU athletics toward their children over the past year.
Parents of three current and former members of the HPU acrobatics and tumbling team spoke to Spectrum News about their rising anger and frustration about issues they say have been building since last May.
Much of the alleged disconnect occurred during the seven months in which the acro team, as it’s known for shorthand, went without a coach once the previous coach stepped down soon after the 2022 season completed at nationals. A new coach was eventually hired, but not before HPU athletes had to coach themselves during training sessions in the fall.
“Until they got a new head coach, it became like ‘Lord of the Flies,’” said a parent of one HPU student-athlete who wished to remain anonymous because she feared retribution for her daughter. “It was not a good situation.”
The parents — who acknowledge that they do not speak for the entire team — allege it was extremely difficult to get in touch with members of the administration, from Athletic Director Debbie Snell up the ladder to President John Gotanda, as their daughters grew distressed about whether the team would have a coach or a 2023 season at all.
Eventually, a hire was made in December, and the 2023 season started well for the Sharks under new coach Peyton Smith. They won their first two head-to-head meets but lost their next three and finished ranked No. 9, just outside of qualification as a team for this week’s collegiate national championships.
HPU touted its progress during the season; it is sending 12 athletes who qualified to compete in 11 individual events in Sunday’s NCATA National Championship meet at West Liberty University in West Virginia, similar to what it did last season under its previous head coach. One athlete, Ravenna Bala, made the 16-player NCATA All-America team.
However, the group of parents’ concerns remained throughout the 2023 season. Their desired outcomes range from student-athlete access to a mental health specialist, the reinstatement of a player-coach who was suspended from the team, and the outright dismissal of Snell.
Meanwhile, Snell and HPU have been named defendants in two lawsuits from current and former Sharks head coaches alleging discrimination.
Through HPU Vice President and Chief Marketing Communications Officer Jeffrey Rich, the university responded to a series of questions from Spectrum News, including saying that it supports Snell and its acrobatics and tumbling program.
“HPU stands behind AD Snell and the complex and difficult decisions she has had to make in prioritizing and allocating university resources across our athletics programs,” HPU said. “We fully understand that not all programs, coaches and athletes will agree with those decisions, and that in an environment of shared governance, some groups and individuals will be vocal in their disagreements.”
Acro/tumbling is one of eight women’s sports that HPU fields. A combination of gymnastics and cheerleading that requires strength, flexibility and balance, it is considered an emerging NCAA sport; there are eight Division I programs with an acro team, according to the National Collegiate Acrobatics & Tumbling Association, and 34 in Division II where HPU competes.
It is the only such team in Hawaii, and HPU has fielded a roster in the sport since 2014, a few years after the NCATA held its first championship.
HPU has been competitive in the sport in a short time; it had some individuals compete in events at the 2022 championships at the University of Oregon. Shortly after that, coach Haley Garelick left the position for the mainland.
Worries among the team gradually grew over the summer of 2022, the parents who spoke to Spectrum News said, and were amplified when the student-athletes returned for the fall semester and had to prepare for their gradual ramp-up of training to the spring still without a coach in place. Those parents, who were in frequent communication with each other, were among a group comprising about eight of the acro athletes. The ones who spoke to Spectrum News described their children as emotionally distraught.
As to why it took so long to find a coach, the university said, “HPU is committed to making the hiring process an inclusive one. As a result, hiring key positions can take longer than is often the case in the private sector. The search for HPU’s new Acro coach was comprehensive and included students and other groups within the HPU community. Because acro/tumbling is an emerging sport, there are fewer coaching candidates, so it took a bit longer than other searches to find qualified and available candidates. However, once a viable candidate pool was developed, they were moved quickly through the interview process. No competition deadlines were missed, and team practices were supervised by HPU Athletics.”
The position is part-time, like a handful of others for HPU head coaches.
The parent who spoke anonymously has been involved in the gymnastics community for several years and said her contacts at the NCATA told her in August that the position was advertised “very late.” It was months after what was ideal, the parent said.
“That was coming from the people who know,” the parent said. “At that point they said Debbie Snell had never reached out to them and asked for help finding somebody.”
Another team parent, Kathleen Van Antwerp, said some of the team’s training over the period when it lacked a coach included athlete-run sessions in public parks when HPU facilities were unavailable. It caused a competitive disadvantage and a potential danger, she said.
On Dec. 9, HPU announced the hire of Smith, who was a member of the HPU acro/tumbling team for three years and graduated in 2021. In 2022, she was an acro assistant at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.
Despite several offseason athlete defections that occurred during the coaching uncertainty — HPU fielded 27 people on its 2023 roster, down from 35 in 2022 — the Sharks were ranked ninth in the NCATA preseason coaches poll heading into its first meet on March 5. The school noted its competition schedule includes close to the same number of events (five, down from six) from last year and that it continues to support the team’s travel and equipment needs.
In the fall, a student-athlete on the team, Avery Tyson, decided to give up her eligibility in order to coach on an acting basis and keep the team together.
After a matter of weeks, however, Snell suspended her for alleged wrongdoing, including for conduct around acro student-athletes off campus — claims that proved to be specious, said Rory Tyson, Avery’s mother, as her daughter went on to be cleared of wrongdoing by a committee of HPU administrators. Tyson then sought to regain her athlete eligibility at HPU, but the process has languished for months with no result, she said.
HPU said that is inaccurate.
“The University supports Ms. Tyson’s ability to regain her status as a student athlete and has been in direct communication with Ms. Tyson to facilitate her eligibility should she seek to regain her status,” it said. It did not address the investigation or the Tysons’ claim that Avery Tyson was cleared of wrongdoing as a coach.
Rory Tyson, on behalf of her daughter, disputed HPU’s response that it has offered to welcome her back, saying there had been no contact from the school for months.
Tyson and her husband are high school athletic administrators in Texas.
“We talk to our athletes and our parents and are transparent about what’s going on,” she said. “I feel that there’s not a lot of transparency. Be transparent about what you’re doing to your athletes, to the community, and I don’t feel like that’s there.”
Van Antwerp, a certified mental health and child behavioral specialist who has taught at various universities over the last 20 years, said she’s concerned about Tyson and other members of the team who were prone to anxiety for months. That could lead to a heightened risk for injury during training or competition, she said, if left untreated.
“The experience was traumatic. I’m not being dramatic,” Van Antwerp said. “Someone’s mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It basically affects how we think, feel and act every day. It’s an integral part of our health, and their physical health.”
HPU said resources for mental health are available to its student-athletes.
“Student safety and well-being is the University’s absolute and number one priority,” it said. “Throughout this process, team practices were supervised by university staff and no competition deadlines or key activities were missed. To address students’ mental well-being, the University made students aware of counseling resources, and our licensed psychologists were available to any student athlete needing assistance.”
Van Antwerp said that is not enough and that the school needs to recognize the “trauma and adversity” it put its student-athletes through and bring in a mental health specialist.
“There’s so many things that are intertwined in a person’s mental health,” Van Antwerp said. “That remains what my concern was and still is, that HPU absolutely was negligent, and came across as very unconcerned about the well-being of these athletes.”
Student-athletes on the team who Spectrum News contacted declined interviews.
However, on a recording of a November meeting between Snell and team members that was circulated among the parents and supplied to Spectrum News, student-athletes voiced concern about Avery Tyson’s status in the wake of her suspension as coach and worried that they would have no season to compete in the spring. The in-person meeting was held while Tyson was under investigation by Snell.
There was apparent animosity from some of them toward Snell, especially regarding a perceived lack of communication about their future and rumors the program would be cut. On the recording, Snell acknowledged, “I see your angry faces” but said she couldn’t go into detail about Tyson’s ongoing case besides referencing alleged “unacceptable behavior.”
Snell told the team she was there to help them “have a great experience” and help them through “the crisis that we’re in.”
Frustrations were not easily allayed.
Said one student-athlete on the recording, “It’s incredibly frustrating, and we all came here … for this program and the program is not here. This is not a program, at all. And I’m sorry that I’m coming off the way that I am right now, but this is not how I talk to people in my normal day situation. This is after weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of all of us trying to push for something that our admin is fouling up. And it’s getting crazy.”
Another student-athlete said, “I think from the outside perspective, it kind of looks like our team is a hot mess burning to the ground. That is what it looks like and that’s why East Coast teams, multiple, have thought that we are crumbling.”
Snell told the team multiple times during the session that she understood their frustrations.
To a question from a student-athlete about what HPU plans to do with its hiring process at an impasse, she replied, “We continue to practice or continue to plan, to solve the problems together. That’s what we do. You know what, that’s what people do when you’re in a crisis. (You) work together to find solutions, and that’s what you will have to do for the rest of your life.”
Snell indicated openness to input from team members to find a new coach. She told the team their scholarships would be honored regardless of what happened with a coach.
Spectrum News provided HPU with a copy of the recording. HPU declined to comment on it, citing its ongoing legal cases involving Snell and the current and former coaches of other sports. However, there was no indication its stance about the alleged acro/tumbling issues changed due to its contents.
The parents who spoke to Spectrum News said that besides an occasional email from Snell, they could not reach HPU administrators during the months-long period of uncertainty.
The mother of a Sharks athlete who spoke to Spectrum News anonymously eventually had what she described as a “testy” conversation with HPU Provost Jennifer Walsh, she said. Van Antwerp said she appreciated a callback from Marites McKee, HPU’s Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students, but it did not result in further discussion.
“I made personal phone calls more than once, left detailed voice messages, asked for calls to be returned, asked for action to be taken, asked for the administrative athletic department to communicate to the families,” Van Antwerp said. “When you have student-athletes under your care, one of the core tenets of mental health/well-being, is that if there are concerns, there’s communication between families and universities. And that was completely removed.”
HPU maintained that lines of communication were open.
“The University is required to communicate directly with students,” it said. “During this process, Director Snell held regular team meetings, and students were advised to keep their parents informed regarding the information being conveyed. Due to parents' heightened concerns, Director Snell sent multiple group emails to parents and responded to individual emails sent by parents. Additionally, Director Snell, President Gotanda, and Provost Walsh had several direct conversations with parents via email and phone.”
One instance of communication from Snell only served to anger Rory Tyson. A fundraising email from Snell on Feb. 1 for National Girls and Women in Sports Day included images of Avery Tyson, who hadn’t been a team member for months. Spectrum News reviewed the email.
HPU has stood fast behind Snell since her hire in May 2021 after more than five years at Holy Names University, an Oakland, Calif.,-based school that has since announced it’s shutting down at the end of the 2022-23 academic year due to decreasing enrollment.
As at Holy Names, Snell was assigned at HPU to oversee an athletic department during difficult economic times. HPU’s budget has constricted significantly in recent years, according to people familiar with the school’s inner workings who spoke to Spectrum News.
Snell, a former standout women’s basketball player at Arkansas, is a veteran athletics administrator at the NCAA Division II and III levels.
In 2009, as the athletic director at D-II Texas A&M International University, she was fired during the course of an NCAA investigation into academic fraud committed by six student-athletes. TAMIU was cited for a failure to monitor its athletics program and placed on probation for two years.
Spectrum News could not find any public statements from Snell, who did not comment for this story, on her dismissal from TAMIU.
Snell's other stops as either a head or assistant athletics administrator included Dominican (Calif.), Campbell (N.C.), Palm Beach Atlantic (Fla.), Cal Baptist, Union (Tenn.), and Holy Names.
One of Snell’s first big moves at HPU was the controversial removal of women’s basketball coach Reid Takatsuka for alleged mistreatment of student-athletes. Takatsuka, who oversaw the most successful period in program history, has yet to coach again. In March, he became the first coach to file a lawsuit against Snell and HPU.
At Holy Names and HPU, students filed petitions for Snell’s removal. Last year, HPU administration told Spectrum News, “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.”
If anything, Snell’s influence within the department has only grown. She assumed a hands-on role in HPU’s NCAA compliance — the area responsible for ensuring NCAA rules and regulations are followed — after an employee left the school to take a position elsewhere in the winter, HPU confirmed.
After a member of the HPU Student Athlete Advisory Committee started the change.org petition for Snell’s removal last year, Snell moved into a position of control of SAAC, a source familiar with the situation said.
However, HPU disputed that, saying the SAAC committee is “not overseen by the AD.”
The daughters of two of the parents who spoke to Spectrum News continue to compete for HPU.
One has requested to enter the transfer portal but will compete in the meantime. Another intends to finish her career at HPU. Avery Tyson plans to talk to the new coach, Smith, after the season to figure out her next steps.
The parent who spoke anonymously said, “I believe very firmly that if this is not exposed, and the university is not pushed to take some action, that this will continue to get worse and worse.”
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.