Ambiguity shrouds departure of former girls’ tennis coach
Tennis coach’s career over after 19 years
Former girls varsity tennis coach Richard Mount’s 19-year coaching career came to an unexpected end last spring after an athlete reported to a high school social worker that Mount touched her inappropriately, according to the police report led after a subsequent investigation.
Mount was placed on administrative leave immediately following the incident, but it was not until this March that the team learned his coaching career at the high school was over.
Mount said that during a practice last May, he repeatedly told the girls on his team to stop talking so he could give instructions. When they did not quiet down, he turned around and tapped one of the girls on her backside with his clipboard, Mount said. He said the action was simply to get their attention and he had no malicious or sexual intent.
The athlete Mount tapped with his clipboard reported the incident to a social worker. The athlete, who wished to remain anonymous, said she had been tapped on her buttocks by him before and that other girls on the team, especially the younger girls, had told her they felt uncomfortable with the coach’s conduct, which included shaking the athletes’ hands for extended periods of time, commenting on their outfits, complimenting their physical attributes and making jokes about blondes.
“I thought I would take the initiative and ask the social worker what to do about it and if there’s any way we could improve the situation to make the team more comfortable, because people weren’t really having a good time,” she said.
Upon hearing the player’s complaints, the social worker reported the most recent incident to Athletic Director Pete Rittenburg, Dean of Students Scott Butchart and Headmaster Deborah Holman, according to the police report. When a social worker learns of something that may be harmful to a student or may put a student at risk, he or she is mandated to report that information to the student’s dean, according to Butchart.
Butchart proceeded to notify the police of the incident. The day after Butchart contacted the police, the police spoke with Rittenburg. Rittenburg had called Mount to ask him if he had violated appropriate coaching conduct, according to the police report.
“I was home and Pete Ri tenburg gave me a call and he asked me, did I strike the girl on her backside with a clipboard? And I said, ‘Yes, I did,’” Mount said.
Following his phone conversation with Rittenburg, Mount was placed on administrative leave, according to the police report. The report said Rittenburg had never before heard a complaint about Mount’s behavior.
The athlete who reported the incident said that although she believed Mount should not return to the team, she felt the administration did a poor job handling the investigation. She said the administration never informed the players or their parents of what happened or why Mount left in the middle of the season.
“I was actually the one to tell the parents and that put me, as a kid and a student, in a really tough situation,” she said. “I wanted the parents to know what was going on with their kids and why suddenly their coach is not there.”
Fired or Retired?
Mount never returned to coach.
Though the police officer conducting the investigation determined, after speaking with the athlete, that Mount did not intend to commit a crime or act sexually, Mount said Rittenburg asked him to write a letter of retirement.
Mount said he could not do so because he was not resigning his position by choice.
“I told him in the letter, I couldn’t write I retired because I didn’t retire,” he said. “I was technically fired.”
Both Holman and Rittenburg, who were named in the police report as reporting persons, declined to comment on the specifics of Mount’s departure.
Holman said the school never asks its employees to retire.
Mount said he was initially upset because he did not want to end his coaching career in this manner. He said he was planning to retire after the 2015 season, which would have been his 20th season coaching at the high school.
According to Mount, a couple of his friends had 380 people ready to sign a letter to Superintendent Bill Lupini asking for Mount’s reinstatement. However, Mount asked that it not be sent, saying that he did not want to make a big deal out of the situation.
Mount said he felt that the incident reported to the police was very minor, but once the police got involved, “the school probably had no other option than to let me go.”
Mount’s Conduct
The seven current and former tennis players coached by Mount who were interviewed for this article had differing views on whether his conduct through the years had been innocuous or inappropriate. However, all attributed his questionable actions, at least to some extent, to a generation gap between him and the players.
Mount, who turns 82 this spring, worked for IBM for 32 years and ran a trophy company for four years before becoming a tennis professional and turning to coaching in 1995. His record in 19 years of coaching at the high school was 282-75, he said. In addition to coaching, Mount said he has played over 27,000 sets of competitive tennis.
He is set to be inducted into the United States Tennis Association New England Hall of Fame in June.
“For me personally, it kind of pained me to see him keep coaching because he was very old and the girls had to take care of him at some points,” the athlete who reported the incident said. “Like if it was a long day, the coach would be more tired than the girls who were running around.”
She said the incident she reported to the social worker was not the first time Mount had made her uncomfortable.
“Sometimes he would come up to me from behind [after a match] and whack me with his clipboard on the butt and say, ‘Good job, you’re great,’ and walk away. It wasn’t very pleasant for me at all,” she said.
Senior Sara Luster said other girls had also been tapped on their buttocks by Mount.
Senior co-captain Rachel Hechinger said Mount would sometimes compare athletes to celebrities based on their appearance.
“If a girl was blonde, she’d be Meg Ryan, that type of thing,” Hechinger said. “We thought it was funny, but obviously not the most appropriate thing. We just knew it was the generation gap.”
Three of the seven athletes said Mount made frequent comments about the blonde players on the team.
Annalivia Robinson ’14 said Mount often made comments like, “Oh, I love blondes.”
“But it was nothing that I ever felt threatened about,” she said. “It was more of a joke. Everyone laughed about it and one of my teammates said to me, ‘It’s more of how a grandfather would talk to his granddaughter.’”
Hechinger said she always appreciated his understanding and lightheartedness.
“He was a nice guy, very funny. He always wanted to uplift the team with one of his jokes and he always had hope for us, so that was nice,” she said.
The athlete who reported the incident described him as a grandfather figure to the athletes on the team when she was interviewed during the investigation, the report said.
According to the police report, she said that “Coach is a really nice man” but some of his conduct made her and other athletes on the team feel uncomfortable, and she felt that he was “an old guy who went beyond what was appropriate.”
The End of an Era
Robinson said she is upset that Mount’s career will end this way.
“He’ll have this negative mark on him, and he’s not a young guy,” Robinson said. “He can’t really bounce back from this. This is what people are going to remember him by, which is just so sad.”
Mount also said he was disappointed by the circumstances of his departure.
“I was upset at the time because I didn’t want to end my career coaching at the high school on that element,” he said. “I had been there 19 years and I enjoyed every minute of it, and this year particularly, the girls tennis team was going to be one of the best teams I would have ever had.”
Meanwhile, Rittenburg announced one week before the start of the season that math teacher Bruce Mallory would take Mount’s place and that Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention Program Coordinator Mary Minott would be the assistant coach.
Mallory coached tennis at Lexington High School for several years, where he was awarded a Boston Globe Coach of the Year award. He also played varsity tennis at Swarthmore College. He said he has a great deal of work to do as the team moves forward under new leadership.
Mount is slated to be inducted into the United States Tennis Association New England Hall of Fame in June. [/pullquote]“I want to figure out where they’re coming from and what the team looked like last year, so there’s a lot that I have to catch up on,” he said.
Mount said he remembered former Athletic Director Walter Sargent’s warning to him when he was in Mallory’s place 20 springs ago.
“The first thing [Sargent] told me when I was hired to do the job was, ‘Never touch the girls.’ You don’t high five them, you don’t hug them,” Mount said. “Just don’t touch the girls, because there’s always an incident like this that can cause a lot of problems.”