New school, old wounds

Now at Bryant, ex-Duke lacrosse coach still grapples
with scandal's fallout

By Jackie MacMullan

SMITHFIELD, R.I. -- During the most harrowing moments, when the hateful, threatening signs cropped up on his lawn under the cover of darkness, when the anonymous e-mails mentioning his children by name were delivered to him, when a university that once embraced him warmly suddenly shunned him like a pariah with a contagious disease, former Duke lacrosse coach Mike Pressler laced up his sneakers and walked it off.

"One day, I walked 10 miles," Pressler said. "All by myself, through the Duke forest. It's a beautiful place."

He paused, his face creased with sorrow and resignation.

"We just sold our home there."

The Pressler family will settle in Smithfield, a few miles from the Bryant University campus where he is the new lacrosse coach.

He is grateful to be given an opportunity to continue doing what he loves.

There were ample reasons to believe that Pressler's career was shredded after an alleged incident in March 2006, when members of his Duke lacrosse team hired two strippers for an off-campus party. One of the strippers, who was African-American, alleged that she was raped by three players.

Those accusations led to the indictment of David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty on charges of first-degree forcible rape, first-degree sexual offense, and kidnapping.

The case had enough salacious elements to fuel a national frenzy: sex, racial tension, and social conflict. District attorney Michael Nifong, running for re-election, tried his case in public.

Pressler resolutely stood by his players, who were portrayed as privileged athletes run amok. On April 5, 2006, he was asked to resign. The 2006 season was canceled and the program suspended indefinitely.

The coach stayed in Durham, N.C., an alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking decision. Wanted posters appeared all over campus demanding that the lacrosse players come clean. The Presslers received veiled and overt threats. They stopped answering the door, the phone, their mail. Sue Pressler, a former college swim coach, assured her husband that she and their girls, Janet and Maggie, could withstand the firestorm. Friends from outside and within Duke rallied around them.

Yet it became apparent that the family needed a change of scenery.

"I couldn't get a job," Pressler said. "I contacted three different institutions and they wouldn't even consider me. People said, 'Coach, take a couple of years off.' My reaction was, 'No way.' "

In the months that followed, troubling inconsistencies in the victim's testimony surfaced. DNA evidence showed sexual activity but did not match the DNA of the accused. Nifong was accused of deliberately withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense.

On Dec. 22, 2006, prosecutors dropped the rape charges against the three players, though charges of kidnapping and sexual assault remained. Six days later, the North Carolina Bar Association filed ethics charges against Nifong for "conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation."

Pressler said he will have plenty to say about his players' ordeal when the time is right.

"The tough part is, the longer this drags on, the longer the lives of these kids are on hold," Pressler said. "Collin and Reade need to be in school [Evans has graduated]. Until this is settled, they can't move forward."

The Duke scandal is yesterday's news. Sometime soon, it's likely that all charges will be dropped, but it's unlikely the fanfare of that announcement will match the hysteria that accompanied the original indictments. Meanwhile, the lives of the players are in tatters.

Evans, Seligmann, and Finnerty have racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. The two underclassmen were invited in January by president Richard Brodhead to return to Duke, but that is unlikely. There is no such option for Pressler, who won three ACC titles and boasted a perfect graduation rate among his players.

His ex-players remain appalled by their alma mater's lack of regard for the coach.

"Let's just say I'm a huge Bryant Bulldog fan now," said Duke alumnus Joe Donovan.

Donovan, a Weymouth native, played for Pressler from 1994-97. He objected to the blanket characterization of Duke lacrosse players as spoiled rich kids from privileged homes.

"My father is a school teacher," he explained. "My mother is a librarian. I'm one of nine kids. Coach Pressler was like a father figure to me. He was a disciplinarian who expected a lot from us.

"Were we always angels? No. But when someone screwed up, Coach Pressler made you pay the price. Are strippers are a good idea? Obviously not. Those kids made a mistake. But Coach Pressler wasn't there. Why does that cost him his job?"

One of the subplots to the Duke case has been the debate over whether a coach should be accountable for players' actions. Obviously, he or she bears some responsibility. But how much?

"You raise your players to make good judgments," Pressler said. "Every Friday night, I talked to them about the weekend and the consequences of the choices they would make.

"If I had caught them, they would have paid a severe price. I would have dealt with them harshly. I never got the chance to do that."

"People say, 'How could he have not known?' " said Sue Pressler. "Well, some of the people who are saying that are parents whose kids are drinking in the bushes -- and they don't know it. It happens with athletes and nonathletes alike at Duke, and schools all over the country.

"It's a time in kids' lives when they are figuring out how solid the boundaries are, and how dire the consequences are. You try to make them see. But they think they won't get caught. When I was a coach, I told my team, 'Just because you didn't get caught, that's not the same thing as not doing it.' "

Duke law professor James Coleman Jr. was appointed to examine the lacrosse team's culture in the wake of the charges. He concluded that the team "exhibited exemplary academic and athletic performance" and displayed neither sexist nor racist behavior, but the pattern of misconduct among lacrosse players in recent years was "alarming." Their abuse of alcohol was higher than other sports teams but on a par with other Duke students "who abused alcohol."

His recommendations included a stricter code of conduct for all Duke athletes, better communication between Student Affairs and the athletic department, and a stronger alcohol policy for all students.

They are sound ideas, but too late for Pressler and his team, who continue to pay the price of the events of last spring.

"People don't understand," said Dan Flannery, who played at Duke from 2003-06. "Not only was Coach dealing with turmoil in his own family, he was dealing with 46 kids who were upset on a regular basis, every day, calling him and crying and trying to cope.

"The looming charges were like a dartboard. None of us knew who [would be accused]. We were in an incredibly delicate emotional state, and Coach Pressler made sure we held it together."

Pressler continues to counsel players -- both those accused and those caught in the crossfire. The psychological damage they've suffered, he said, makes him physically ill.

Sue Pressler is asked what this ordeal has done to her husband. She paused so long that the question was repeated to her.

"I'm sorry," she said, choking back tears. "I'm trying to get myself together.

"The first word that pops into my head is 'sad.' Mike's been sad from the beginning. Not about the tangible stuff, like losing his job, or having his reputation questioned.

"The sad part is his kids were taken away from him, and he was taken away from them.

"If you have ever coached, or coached like he does, you'd understand this isn't just a job to him. It wasn't just about the four years he had with a player. It was about the weddings, the new babies, the funerals. He invested in their lives. Our whole family did.

"And that's why it hurts so much when people say, 'Those darn kids. Look at what they did to you.' Would you ever say that about your own children if they made a mistake?"

The Presslers are preparing for the move to Rhode Island. Janet, 15, is a champion volleyball player and searching for a program to match her skills. Sue Pressler hopes the change will benefit 8-year-old Maggie, who used to be independent but now does not leave her mother's side.

Maggie does not know her daddy's new "boys" yet. She is still too focused on the old team, the broken team, the young men whose lives have forever been altered.

"I believe in those kids," Mike Pressler said. "I always have. I made the decision to stand by them at any cost, and it cost me my job. Thank God it didn't cost me my career."

Bryant's lacrosse team is a competitive Division 2 squad with a current mark of 1-2. Pressler is excited about the commitment athletic director Bill Smith has made to him and the program.

"My responsibility to the 37 players I have here at Bryant is not to be a distraction," said Pressler. "I've been very honest with them. They understand I cannot turn my back on the kids I've left behind.

"Together we have hung our entire lives on two words: the truth."

There are no winners in the Duke lacrosse case. The lives of three young men have been permanently scarred, even if all charges are dropped. A young woman's inconsistencies have dealt a blow to all rape victims, who endure the most horrific of crimes but so often face the daunting task of having their credibility unfairly questioned.

A respected university rushed to judgment, and shattered the world of a group of student-athletes and a respected coach in the process. Duke lacrosse players who had secured jobs pending graduation were startled to learn they were no longer available once the scandal broke.

The Duke lacrosse program was recently reinstated. The Blue Devils are 5-1 and ranked fifth in the country. Mike Pressler has purposely kept his distance. It is, after all, no longer his team.

But they will always be his kids.