Reply to Whitman Teacher and Crew Coach Arrested

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Has anyone given a good reason why the Board handed over the letter of complaint to the Coach this past summer (before he was arrested)? Anyone had to know that would chill further complaints. The justifications in the article, such as that the girls had not requested confidentiality, seemed pretty weak. I believe that many of the crew parents did not have all the facts, but that one fairly recent decision by the Board members seems pretty indefensible given that these concerns had been raised before.  [/quote]

It is truly amazing. He was calling the athletes he coached names to the board members regarding the letter and then they renewed his contract!

I have(had)  multiple rowers who row out of TBC. Shipley being a creeper wasn't a secret even for the female athletes on other teams. What non-rowing parents may not know is that there are tons of teams down at TBC everyday during the fall and spring seasons. The kids generally know each other from neighborhoods, elementary school, other sports, friends of friends, etc. They see each other every day down on the water and most weekends at regattas. They all talk and gossip. It was well known on our team that Shipley was an asshole to the kids but got results so everyone put up with him. He was openly abusive to his athletes which made a lot the the females from other teams feel uncomfortable. Yes rowing is intense but he was definitely an outlier in his public treatment of his athletes. Our teams travel a lot too. Never would it just be a coach and the kids. Never. We would see Whitman at the travel locations and do just assumed parents had gone too-- like every other team!  The whole program is completely toxic.

The good news this that the girls rowing out of TBC did really well this fall. So glad to see them loving the sport....and not being humiliated in public or worse! [/quote]

there is so much misinformation being tossed around on this thread, and what is most upsetting to me to read are the parents of rowers in other HS programs who seem so quick to [b]throw the whitman rowing parent community under a bus and allege the community as a whole cares more about winning than their own children’s or any child’s safety[/b]. I am the parent of 2 whitman rowers (boy/girl, but the team travels together), and I have never observed a regatta involving overnight travel where there have not been parent chaperones. I can’t speak to what happened in 2018, but for the past few years that has been true (and there are very few overnight regattas). Many teams practice year round as you know if you are the parent of rowers at another area high school - bcc, wj, wilson, etc. - and many teams have culture issues, including there were some on area teams this past fall but I don’t view it as appropriate to start calling out other teams nor would I pretend to know the inner workings. To be clear, Shipley is clearly a predator and with hindsight should have been removed and arrested long ago, I doubt anyone feels otherwise on that point. [/quote]

No one has thrown the entire Whitman parent rowing community under the bus.  Board which is parents yes but the whole group?  Nope.

Sure I know of other teams who have had problems but none to the extent which the Post has reported on where parents in the community (your community) were speaking out only to be shut down by parents in the same community.  The program -- board, coach and whomever at Whitman had connection to it are toxic.  The Whitman parents we know who have kids rowing out of TBC were just as shocked as the rest of us but frankly, not shocked that other kids noticed the coaching issue which were happening in public. [/quote][/quote]

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