Janelle Atkinson, former Stony Brook women's swim coach, files discrimination lawsuit against school
A former coach of the Stony Brook women’s swim team has filed a gender and race discrimination lawsuit against the university over the decision to terminate her employment after less than a year.
Stony Brook athletic officials said in January 2018 that coach Janelle Atkinson’s employment was not being renewed. Athletic director Shawn Heilbron said at the time the decision to not retain Atkinson was not related to the school's investigation into accusations against Atkinson of emotional abuse made by members of the swim team.
Atkinson’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in November, alleges that Stony Brook held her to “higher standards” than coaches who are white men because her coaching tactics were no different than theirs.
A letter sent to university officials at the time by a student-athlete accused Atkinson of cursing and degrading players, threatening to take scholarships away, forcing them to practice when ill and ignoring their injuries.
Atkinson, a two-time Olympian, is a black woman of Jamaican descent. She said the allegations are false and the acceptable standard of behavior for coaches is different for women compared to men.
“When everything went down, I was shocked,” Atkinson said by phone. “I didn’t do any of the things that were claimed about me. Would this have happened if I was male? Would it have happened if I was white?”
A Stony Brook spokeswoman declined to comment, citing pending litigation. The state university is being represented by attorneys from the state’s Attorney General office, which declined to comment. The school also has never released the details of their investigation. Heilbron, the athletic director, did not return a message seeking comment.
Atkinson, 37, coached previously at Fairfield, Connecticut and Wright State before Stony Brook hired her in March 2017 to lead a swimming program that had been dormant for five years while the pool was renovated.
Atkinson said she is now an aquatics director for a learn-to-swim center in Queens. She is being represented by Thomas Newkirk, an Iowa-based attorney who focuses on cases dealing with implicit bias. He also represented former Rutgers swim coach Petra Martin, who resigned in 2017 amid similar allegations of emotional abuse. She sued the school and reached a $725,000 settlement, NJ Advance Media reported.
Jim Baumbach is an award-winning investigative reporter at Newsday, where he has worked since 1998. He spent two decades in the sports department, where he covered every professional team and league, including events such as the Super Bowl and World Series.
