School Board retains JHS volleyball coach Paula Stewart

The Jacksonville District 117 Board of Education called a special meeting Wednesday night to take action on hiring or rehiring a list of coaches and assistant coaches for the 2008-09 fall season. After nearly two hours of closed session, the board members approved the list by a vote of 6-1, provoking a prompt and angry response from a group of volleyball parents and players who�d showed up to oppose head coach Paula Stewart�s rehiring. �This whole thing�s been a farce!� one parent shouted as she banged her hand on one of the Administrative Center�s cafeteria tables. �You had your minds made up before it even started!� Steve Cantrell voted �no,� but not because of the volleyball matter. He said he wanted more time to review the hiring of an assistant football coach. As the board members headed back into a second closed session, board president Steve Todd and district superintendent Les Huddle stayed behind for a few minutes to hear out the outraged parents and a few sobbing teenage athletes. But no peace was made. The brief meeting ended with Ron Freeman, one of the parents, threatening a lawsuit against the board. �We�re extremely disappointed, extremely disappointed,� said Freeman. �We have so much information, so much documented information of emotional abuse exacted on our daughters by coach Stewart, and it�s not an isolated incident. It was repeated with shocking consistency. To have the board handle the situation in an hour or two, is just unconscionable.� The board�s decision clearly upset the six Jacksonville High volleyball players who�d attended Wednesday�s meeting. All six student athletes could return to the squad this fall, but have either vowed not to play for Stewart, or are now afraid to. A letter written to the school board by one of those players, Alyssa Jackson, begins, �I have no chance at all to play volleyball at JHS IF Coach Stewart is rehired, because of what I am about to say.� That letter, as well as two others provided by 2007 JHS graduates Andrea Beets and Jessica Rawlings, alleges instances of verbal abuse, implied threats, and inappropriate behavior ranging from unprofessional to divisive to passive aggressive. �There is a difference between being hard on a player to make her play harder and just tearing a girl down,� said Beets, now a freshman student at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston and whose sister Brooke was a sophomore on the Crimsons squad last fall. �I don�t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.� Rawlings said that she and Beets were two of Stewart�s favorite players during their junior high years, when Rawlings always won the team�s �Sportsmanship� award and Beets carried Most Valuable Player honors. Both of them supported Stewart�s hiring in August of 2006, after former head coach Julie Manker left to take a higher-paying teaching job in Springfield. Rawlings said she had even then written the school board a letter of recommendation in favor of Stewart. Now the former libero blames Stewart for ruining her senior year in volleyball � suspending her twice during the season and then embarrassing her at the team�s postseason awards banquet. �I won the �Most Defensive� player award on the team,� Rawlings said, �but we had to take the plaque back to have it redone, because it listed the number of errors I�d made instead of the number of digs.� Rawlings is now a freshman biology and pre-pharmacy major at the University of Illinois-Chicago. She still plays intramural volleyball. Both Rawlings and Beets expressed concern for the players who are still in the JHS program, and said that is the reason they�ve now come forward and are willing to talk on the record. Freeman said the players who do not want to play for Stewart have been put into a difficult situation by Wednesday�s board vote. �They�re all starters, or were last year,� he said. �They�re very enthusiastic about playing volleyball. There�s some hard decisions they have to make as student athletes. There�s also some very hard decisions we have to make at this point.� Freeman said he is already in contact with an attorney and that he is awaiting a call back to discuss whatever options the parents have as recourse after the board�s decision to retain Stewart. �We want to protect our daughters from abuse,� Freeman said. �We�re not talking about just isolated incidents. We�re talking about what we feel is child endangerment being exacted on our daughters.� Neither Stewart nor team operations manager Kari Farrell could be reached for comment Wednesday night, and neither returned phone calls made to them.