Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Hustle and pro. I'm your host, Kelly Walker. Welcome to episode 191. For more than five years, I've brought you stories on this podcast of athletes journeys in sports. Talk to coaches and executives about their methods and backgrounds. Episodes like today are different. They're different because it's the ugly side of sports. It's when adults behave badly. It's when that youth athlete's journey has abuse in it and that they may carry that into their adulthood. It's not something that they would even tell me on a podcast like this. Abuse isn't often talked about, and it's not always recognized in the moment, especially for kids. The story is about someone dear to my heart. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with her and watched her as an athlete, never realizing until several years ago that there was a dark side to her experience. Her male basketball coach said, thanks to her, that no male should say to a teenage girl, let alone the student at their school. He was a trusted person in her life, trusted by the school, the parents, and the girl to lead and coach and help. But he took advantage of that trust, and it turns out it was a pattern. As my friend realized later on, another girl at the same school had a similar experience with the same coach. Then later on, more recently, more girls in another city. After that school had passed, the trash ended up coaching these more girls who came forward with similar experiences.
It's all very disgusting to me, and it disappoints me. But I'm telling the story because it's part of sports. Even though we don't like it, we don't want to admit it, we don't like to talk about it. I love the happy. Don't get me wrong, it's 99% of what I talk about here on hustle and pro. But recently, I've realized these are important. Also, an old episode surfaced, and I realized the hard ones are necessary. It was about racial issues in sports. Again, not the good stuff that we're proud of, but someone heard it and shared it from years ago, and them remembering it and talking about it again made me realize that it can make a difference. So here we are. I'm going to read through this story to tell it out loud, hoping that.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: It makes a difference.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: It's a Texas Monthly article written by Alexandra Samuels and Don Solomon. It was published on May 24, 2024, but it was in the works for a long time. As one of the victims in this story told me, this is just a.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: Small piece of what happened.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Arrest affidavits and victim impact statements really explain that. What you see here in the Texas Monthly article, it's just scratching the surface of what they all really went through.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Here we go. The article is titled a coach pleaded guilty to charges related to sexually harassing athletes, yet he's still working with young girls.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Former players say the decorated Texas girls.
[00:02:50] Speaker C: Basketball coach Mark A. Myers, has a history of grooming and harassment that dates back to the nineties, when Anna Albright entered a basketball gym in suburban Austin.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: With her ten year old son during.
[00:03:02] Speaker C: A tournament in early 2023. She walked past the man who decades earlier had been her coach. The encounter nearly stopped albright in her tracks. It was shocking, she said. I never thought I'd see him again. My body went into fight or flight mode. I looked at him and he was with a team of girls, laughing and joking, and I immediately recognized his demeanor. Albright kept moving towards the bleachers, and when she sat down, she did a quick Internet search on her phone to confirm that the coach was the man. She remembered the first link she found, a February 2023 story from the colleen daily heraldeheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh confirmed it. The headline read, lampass is high girls basketball coach arrested on misdemeanor charges. Other stories referenced court records and improper communications between mark myers and a student at the school located about an hour's drive northwest of Austin, and that he faced two counts of official oppression. This charge includes various abuse of authority, including, the article noted, sexual harassment. You know how jims are super loud. It was like all went silent, Albright recalled. I just sat there and I thought, this is what it was. It has a name. Now it has a name for what he did.
The discovery led Albright to look further into Myers career path after she had played for him at Waco's Vanguard College preparatory school in the mid nineties. He continued his coaching career, bouncing from school to school until he eventually landed at Cedar Park High, roughly 15 miles northwest of Austin, in 2000. Then, early in the 2016 to 2017.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: School year, Myers left Cedar park, citing.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Stress as a reason he found a new job at Lampass's high the next school year. He resigned from that position in January 2023 after the school district began its investigation into his behavior.
Albright knew that he had continued his coaching career despite allegations of grooming and sexual harassment that she and others had made against him decades earlier. But she was astounded that even after his arrest, Myers was still coaching young girls. Albright's name has been changed to protect her privacy as someone who experienced childhood sexual harassment, Myers is now 62 years old and says he's retiring, though he can still often be seen on the sidelines when Phoenix select, the Central Texas club team he runs with his daughter, competes in tournaments. He arrived to an interview at Texas Mentley's office carrying a small, long haired dachshund and a shoulder bag, and said he couldn't find a sitter for the dog. During the hour long meeting, Meyer stressed the ways he has helped the students he's worked with. He showed images of players during a team trip to Philadelphia, running up the steps that Sylvester Stallone triumphantly mounted in the movie Rocky. He mentioned taking players families to historic sites and theme parks. He talked about the young athletes who had gone from his club team to college basketball scholarships. I just want you to know that's why so many kids come play for us. It's not just the opportunity to get a college scholarship and get their education paid for and play a sport that they love, but because they trust us and they know us, he said. I know you've heard some bad stuff, but I just want you to know that I'm a good person.
That claim, however, is hard to square with Myers guilty plea to the February 2023 charges in a courtroom in Lampasas. Months later, on May 7, he was sentenced to two years of deferred adjudication, probation and fines worth $2,000. In his interview with Texas Monthly, Myers denied some of the allegations about his behavior while coaching in Waco, and he declined to answer some of other questions about that period. He said our publishing a story about these accusations could cost his current players a shot at playing college ball because of their affiliation with him if those allegations became public. Quote, I don't mind if I ever, if I don't ever coach again, he said. I just want those kids to hold on to those scholarships. That's what my concern.
Despite his professed concern for the kids he has coached, some of them, several of whom are now adults well into their forties, say they've been hurt by Myers actions.
Myers began coaching the girls basketball team at Waco Vanguard, a private 6th through 12th grade school, in the early eighties. He won four state titles there before leaving at the end of 1997 season. It was the first stop in a career that saw Myers achieve more than 900 wins. In 2020, the University Interscholastic League UIL, which oversees high school sports in Texas, honored him as one of the hundred greatest basketball coaches in state history. His time in Waco might have been a bright spot for Myers professionally, but for the two of the twelve former Vanguard students and parents who spoke to Texas monthly. The years they spent around him were among the darkest in their lives. In 7th grade, Albright made the middle school team, and Myers took a special interest in her. He affectionately called her Laura, she said, because he told her she reminded him of the character by that name on the tv series Little House on the Prairie.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: He said it was because I was.
[00:07:49] Speaker C: So sweet and gentle. He'd shoot baskets with her in private summer workouts. Several of her teammates told Texas Monthly that Myers clearly favored her. We were, quote, we were in class, sitting at a table together, and Albright started telling me that Mark had been sending her letters. He would leave letters in her locker before games, verbalizing things that he wanted to do with her or that he was attracted to her, recalled Emily Fowler.
She said the notes were romantic in nature.
Sitting in her living room in Austin, Albright, who is now 44, produced notes she had written towards the end of her high school career. As she reflected on her relationship with Myers. She can, she said, recall the words he would tell her during private training sessions. He would say things like, if you were a little older and I was a little younger, we could really have something or you're the kind of person I would marry. That started in 9th grade. She was 14 then. He was in his mid thirties. He declined to comment on this allegation. At the time, Albright said his behavior didn't bother her. I thought it was normal, she said. She thought of him as some combination of his best friend and a father figure. So when she was in 10th grade and he advised her to break up with her boyfriend, she did.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: He was so proud of me and.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: So happy, she said. Myers said he couldn't recall that incident. Albright said that Myers would also flash an intimidating temper that seemed to push the boundaries of the normal player coach dynamic. After she was caught drinking before a school dance, he called her into his classroom alone. He was screaming, she said. It felt very scary because my parents already talked to me about it and the school already talked to me about it, but he had this huge reaction. It was a gut sign to me, like, I don't know what this is, but it doesn't feel good anymore.
A pattern developed during her senior year. She said she and Myers would fight, then rebuild their relationship. Then something else would set him off.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: After her brother threw a party at.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: Their parents house where she and other guests had been drinking, Myers again called her into his classroom alone. He said, I saw you drinking, she recalled. I was there. I came to your house. She didn't believe him, but he insisted. He said, look under the first big tree in your yard as soon as you get to your driveway. That's where I was hiding. I wrote your name in the dirt, she recalled. Albright drove home and checked the tree for her name, but if it had ever been there, it was gone. She still doesn't know if he hid in her yard watching her, but allowed Texas monthly to review a letter he sent her before she graduated. You do not have to be scared to go outside, Myers wrote. I will never go to your house again. He declined to answer questions about Albright's account.
Before a game late in her senior season, Albright strained a muscle in her upper right leg. Myers took her to the training room and massaged the leg, and she was able to play that night, she recalled. She played very well. After, she said, Myers approached her, he pulled me over and said, if a massage can do that, let's up it next time and see what happens, Albright said. That was the final thing that made me think this does not feel good. Myers said that at small schools without professional trainers, a coach would be responsible for activities such as taping ankles and working out muscle cramps, but did not recall if he ever did so for her.
After the season in the spring of 97, Albright told a few of her teammates about his behavior, and they responded that it seemed inappropriate. She then told her parents, who reported Myers to the school administrators. Shortly thereafter, other students and parents at a school with graduating class of 37 found out about Albright's allegations, and she faced a backlash from the coach's supporters. She received an anonymous letter in the mail outlining her supposed misbehavior drinking an overnight trip to her boyfriend's family ranch, a time she sat on a classmate's desk while wearing a skirt. Teammates and their parents accused her of trying to sabotage Myers because she'd been unsatisfied with her playing time. Although some in the Vanguard high school community responded negatively to Albrights accusations, the news of her decision to report Myers reached a former Vanguard girls basketball star and persuaded her to speak out.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Inside her Austin living room, Samantha Reichert.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: Retrieved a yearbook photo of herself from 1987.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: In the image, she's kneeling with a.
[00:12:01] Speaker C: Basketball between her hands and her wavy brown hair brushing her shoulders. Years later, she said, Myers told her.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: That Washington, the first that year, was.
[00:12:09] Speaker C: The first he felt physically attracted to her.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: She was twelve.
Because Rykhardt is a survivor of sexual.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Abuse, her name has been changed in this story.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: That was also the year that Rykart.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: Joined the basketball program at Vanguard.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: She was a gifted player already, and.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: Myers promised to coach her up to the next level.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Quote, he was telling me you're going.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: To be a good basketball player. I want to help you do that.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: He became very invested in me, she said.
That investment came through informal summer training.
[00:12:40] Speaker C: Sessions, sometimes in small groups, sometimes one.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: On one, in which Myers would have.
[00:12:44] Speaker C: Rycart shoot hundreds of three pointers. They spent a lot of time together.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: She recalled, but it took years before.
[00:12:49] Speaker C: She noticed patterns that made her feel uncomfortable around the coach.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Myers, she said, would drive one of.
[00:12:55] Speaker C: The team vehicles to and from games.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: And she typically rode with him along.
[00:12:58] Speaker C: With the other players. He would playfully adjust his mirror and act like he was looking at us, changing.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: It felt so normal going through what.
[00:13:07] Speaker C: I now understand was grooming. After the basketball season in her senior.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Year, Reichert joined the softball team, which.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: Myers also coached, and the two continued what Reichert believed to be nothing more than a friendship.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: To her, the idea that a grown.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: Man would see her as attractive seemed preposterous.
I am 100% telling you that I had no idea that he had feelings for me, Reichardt said. I didn't know adults could feel like this for kids.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Myers, Reichert said, finally expressed his feelings for her after their last softball game together in the spring of 93. Before she went home that day, Reichardt said, Myers pulled her aside and said he wanted to talk in the gymnasium. It was well past school hours and the campus was mostly empty. Reichert said her friends, who were waiting to go home together for a sleepover that night, opted to wait outside while she spoke with the coach.
This is when it all started. He took my hands and said, I'm so excited that our relationship as a coach and player is over and I'm ready for a new relationship with you. He started telling me how he's been attracted to me since I was twelve years old and that every time he had sex with his wife, who was pregnant at the time, that he always thinks of me. He said he envisioned them getting married and spending the rest of our lives together.
Then, Reichert said he kissed her. Myers declined to answer specific questions about this incident, but he denied kissing any athlete who ever played for him, according to a statement provided by Vanguard. The school investigated the claim at the time and determined the allegations. Myers kissed a former student was well founded.
Looking back, Reichert said the part of her felt flattered by the attention from an adult man.
[00:14:45] Speaker C: But she also sensed something wasn't right.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: I felt super special, but my body was saying this is terrifying and gross and you need to get out of there, she said. That night, she told some friends what Myers had done. She had the whitest face you've ever seen, recalled Katie Starr O'Connor, who attended the sleepover with Reichert. She just started crying and she was like, Mark is in love with me and has been since 7th grade. Back then, Reichert said, she didn't know what to do. She trusted Myers. He was an adult who had spent the past six years coaching her to be Vanguard's best basketball player, where other adults treated her like a child. It felt to her that Myers saw her as something more. On her graduation day, she said she received two dozen red roses from a secret admirer who she believed could only be him. The two began a months long relationship. Reichardt said she liked the attention at.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: The time, but she has come to.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Believe that she didn't understand how Myers.
[00:15:38] Speaker C: Was trying to take advantage of her.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: We would leave for lunch and he would want to drive me around in his car and there was a place that he went where he would kiss me. He held my hand all the time, she said. It was all such a game to him.
[00:15:50] Speaker C: It was almost like he dared somebody to catch us.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: It was such a mind game that he was playing. As time went on, Reichert said, she began to feel uncomfortable around Myers. He'd take her to his home, she said, and call his wife to make sure she wouldn't return unexpectedly while Reichert was there. Reichardt said she'd never seen an adult act like this, and she was becoming increasingly unnerved. Finally, she said, she snapped after Myers wrote her a letter expressing his love, and Reichert felt repulsed while reading it. She said she was so shaken that she and O'Connor burned the note. I remember at the time, this is not okay. This is disgusting, Reichardt said. That's why we burned it.
When we asked about all these allegations, Myers denied his having romantic relationship with any of his players.
Reichardt said she tried to distance herself from Myers. She graduated in left Waco to attend Southwestern University, 70 miles southwest in Georgetown. Myers continued to contact her, she said, leaving voicemails and asking to meet her. He even asked Reichert's younger high school friends for advice. He'd call us, quote, he'd call us into his office and try to talk to us about why she wasn't responding to his calls and how in love with her he was, recalled one former.
[00:16:58] Speaker C: Waco Vanguard athlete who had been a.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Year behind Reichert meanwhile, Rycart struggled to process what she'd been through. Her grades began to slide. She was admitted to the hospital three.
[00:17:08] Speaker C: Times for alcohol poisoning.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: She shut everyone out from Vanguard, too.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: Ashamed to share the cause of her suffering.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Then, in 1997, she reconnected with Albright. The two had been close when Reichert, a senior during Albright's 8th grade year, had been in Waco. Albright had dated her younger brother and would occasionally join Reichert's family on trips. When Reichert learned that Myers inappropriate behavior had continued with another high school girl.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: She finally reported him.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Things moved fast after that. Albright and Reichert both shared their experiences with Linda Golpel, who was then head of the school. Vanguard's statement confirmed that the school administrators quickly began looking into the allegations, but that Myers, quote, believing the school would ultimately terminate his employment, resigned while the investigation was underway. It is wrong that a young person would ever feel isolated during an investigation, and if that was the case at the time, VCPS sincerely regrets any action or inaction that resulted in those feelings, the statement read. After Myers left Waco Vanguard, he was hired to coach in Bremend, a tiny berg about 42 miles northwest of College Station. From there, he got an offer at a larger school in Sweeney, a Gulf coast town an hour southwest of Houston. Then, in 2000, he was named girls basketball coach at Cedar Park High School. Administrators from Cedar Park School District did not respond to request for an interview.
Myers time in Cedar park was largely successful in athletic terms. The program was a consistent presence in the district playoffs, and the coach added regular season wins to the tally that would earn him recognition from the UIL. But Meyer's tenure at Cedar park came to an abrupt end in 2016. He was accused of misappropriating school funds and running a pay to play program in which athletes who signed up for his private club teams were promised more playing time than those who did nothing. After a school investigation, administrators sent him a letter informing him that his contract would not be renewed. He opted to resign less than a quarter of the way into the 2016 to 17 season, telling the Austin American Statesman that he did so because of stress. In his interview with Texas Monthly, Myers denied all allegations of wrongdoing in Cedar Park.
Leander ISD reported the allegations to the Texas Education Agency, but there was no indication that officials at the school notified their counterparts in Lampassas before Myers began working there, and the Texas Education Agency took no further action in his case, according to Richard Carlson, a professor at South Texas College of Law. Houston schools in the state aren't required to report when former employees have left because of misconduct.
In general, employers don't have any duty to call future employers, even when they know another employer has hired that person, he said. For a lot of employers, this presents a dilemma because they may, maybe they're troubled by the employee's conduct, but at the same time they worry about the prospect of either a defamation lawsuit or a discrimination lawsuit.
Employers, he noted, are litigation averse even when they believe they'll win at trial. Winning could still cost them tens of thousands of dollars, he said. To avoid that cost, Carlson explained, many schools won't comment on the performance of past employees other than to verify the individual's start and end dates at the institution. Vanguard's statement said the school did not track Myers employment over the years and said he, quote, would not have been recommended, to the best of our knowledge, if contacted by another school.
Vanguard, according to the statement, did not discourage any student or family from contacting any of Myers employers. It was up to each of them.
[00:20:43] Speaker C: Whether they wished to share their knowledge.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: With anyone in the public realm. And so in 2017, administrators at Lampassas.
[00:20:50] Speaker C: High School, seemingly unaware of the complaints.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Against Myers, hired him to coach its girls basketball team. When Anna Albright encountered Myers in that gym in the north Austin suburb of Leander after decades of not seeing her former coach, she calmed herself by searching for information about Myers recent arrest. She learned that the allegations involved two student athletes who played for him at Lampassas and what appeared to her to be a part of pattern of behavior. Monica Feynman, a junior at the school, said Myers began scouting her games when she was in 8th grade and recruited.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: Her for his club team, Phoenix select.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Her name has been changed to protect her privacy as someone who experienced childhood sexual harassment. Her freshman year, she played for both the club program and Lampastas JV squad. As a sophomore, she was selected for the varsity team. That, she said, was when things with Myers got weird. The two agreed to meet for one on one training session, Feynman said, and she arrived early. She had recently gotten into trouble at school, and Myers decided to discipline her for it. He told her he was so glad she was early because it gave them time to discuss her punishment. He gave her two options, he said. You can run for four or 5 miles like what the football boys do, but I don't want to stand there.
[00:22:05] Speaker C: And watch you do that, she recalled. I was like, okay, do you want.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: Me to run or not? The other options, she said, involved trying out a new use for Phoenix select branded face masks that players had worn during the pandemic. The masks resembled neck gaiters, and Myers told Feynman he was trying to decide if it would be appropriate for the 8th grade players to wear them as tube tops. He asked me to put on one.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: And so he could see what it.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: Looked like, she said. So for my punishment, that's what he made me do.
Myers denied asking Feynman to model the garment. Feynman said she went into the bathroom and put the face mask on over her sports bra. When she came out, he said, he was like, I need to see it without the sports bra. Feynman said she was immediately uncomfortable. I knew it was wrong, she recalled. But she didn't want to question Myers authority. I didn't want to run 5 miles and I wasn't going to say no, she explained. Because he's my coach. She put on the mask as instructed, then came back out and spun around at his instruction. I don't understand why you didn't just.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: Do it the first time, she recalled him saying.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Then she returned to the bathroom, put her clothes back on and gave the mask back. He then instructed her to run once up and down the length of the gym. He was like, if anyone asks, he did a punishment and there was running involved, she said. And then he told me, remember, if anyone finds out, it's because you told them. Feynman called the rest of the training session weird. Myers asked her about her sports bra. She said if she really took it off to try on the mask or if she just hid the straps. He asked her probing questions about why she thought the girls wore push up bras. Quote, I just kept saying I don't know, Feynman recalled. At first, Feynman decided not to tell anyone about Myers behavior. Later, though, she learned that the coach had asked another player to submit to the same punishment, and she decided to tell her parents. The morning after she told them, Feynman and her mother met with a group of Lampass's high administrators, including the principal and a law enforcement official, and Feynman wrote down what Myers had asked her to do. Three and a half weeks later, on February 9, he was arrested on two.
[00:24:07] Speaker C: Charges of official oppression.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: The Lampasas county courthouse sits in the middle of the town square. It's a stone structure, smaller on the inside than it looks from the outside, with old, narrow staircases and wooden banisters leading to its courtrooms. On Tuesday, May 7, the day Myers was set to plead guilty to the official oppression charges, the second floor courtroom was packed with more than 40 observers. Many of them were classmates of Albright and Reichert from Vanguard, or the parents of those classmates who remembered why Myers left the school so abruptly in 1997. Both women attended the proceedings with their families, and, as did Feynman's mother, it was a school day and Monica wasn't there. According to her mom, she never wanted to see Myers or be in the same room with him ever again. The other Lampasus player whom Myers harassed, however, was in attendance with her family. After Myers entered his guilty plea that players mother gave a statement to the court about the impact of his behavior on her family. She addressed Myers directly, speaking of her daughter's love of basketball, how the girl discovered the sport at eight years old, took a ball with her on car rides to school and told her parents the following year that she wanted to focus on the game to the exclusion of other extracurricular activities.
The mother described how the family felt when her daughter was in middle school and Myers showed an interest in her we thought we hit the jackpot because of Myers experience and reputation. He was her mentor. When she had problems, whether grades or typical teenage angst, we reached out to Myers to speak with her. Little did we know that he would take advantage of that trust and confidence.
[00:25:40] Speaker C: We placed in him.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: Over the course of her daughter's junior and senior year at Lampasses High, she said, Myers behavior began to change. It replicated the pattern of behavior that Albright and Reichert described. I believe that Mark Myers was grooming my child, she said. The rape, abuse and Incest national network Rain, a non profit based in Washington, DC, has published a five item list of warning signs that indicate that an adult might be grooming a minor for inappropriate relationship. One of those signs is trust development and keeping secrets. The players who reported Myers to authorities all said he worked to establish shared secrets with them, such as wearing a face mask as a tube top or hinting at his desire for an intimate relationship. What can start out as seemingly innocuous secret keeping can be a gateway. That's part of the grooming behavior, said Aaron Robinson, director of media relations for Rain.
It's important to understand that most perpetrators don't just jump right into physical or sexual contact.
After Albright ran into Myers last year, she heard from Reichertez, who had learned of Albright's encounters with the coach through mutual friends. It had been decades since they'd seen each other, and Albright says their reunion felt powerful when she decided to come forward in 1997. I was saved from being totally alone in this really scary situation, she said. When she walked in the door, I saw her after 20 years, it was like, oh, here's my big sister and we're going to do this together.
The two began piecing together the common threads in their stories and looked for ways to make their experience useful to others. They contacted the United States center for Safe Sport, a congressionally mandated oversight organization for amateur athletes, which in conjunction with USA Basketball, suspended Myers coaching license because of the arrest.
They've contacted tournament organizers hosting the Phoenix select teams to notify them of Myers pending criminal charges and of the safe sports suspension. Reichert said she has contacted two local tournament directors, four host sites, gyms where the tournaments were held, one facility that allowed Myers teams to practice there and four national tournament directors since March 2023. Despite those efforts, Myers remains a regular presence at amateur basketball events. His club program, which fields multiple teams starting at the fourth grade level and running through high school, provides revenue for tournament organizers through enrollment fees. And even though his suspension means that Myers is often denied official coaching credentials at the tournaments, there is nothing to stop him from attending events as a member of the public. Once he's in the gym, he often winds up near the sideline performing the duties of a coach. Myers told Texas Monthly that he is still involved with the club teams, but that he's in the process of turning over direct coaching duties to his daughter.
Even if Myers guilty plea means he's unlikely to continue coaching at the high school level, Albright and Reichert worry that he could continue working with Phoenix Select. Myers was sentenced to a kind of probation known as deferred adjudication, which means that if he avoids further legal trouble, he doesn't violate the terms of his two year sentence. His guilty plea will not result in a judgment of guilt against him, and he can petition the court to seal his criminal record. But in the loosely regulated club basketball scene, the guilty plea could hardly have any effect on Myers ability to continue coaching.
There's little anyone aware of the allegations against him can do beyond informing tournament organizers and parents about his past and hoping they take action. Even that may not make much difference. In April, Myers could be seen on the live stream of a tournament in Knoxville, Tennessee, watching Phoenix select games from the baseline and speaking with a current player at courtside. John McGraw, one of the event's directors, told Texas Monthly that Myers could not have received a coaching credential because of the suspension from USA Basketball and that he was under the impression Myers wouldn't be attending. He may have paid as a spectator and then went down there and coached on the sideline, McGraw said. There's really no way for us to know if he circumvented the process to do that. In an email to Texas Monthly, Myers wrote, quote, I bought a spectator admission band and watched games, and that limited seating meant that he stood mostly on the baseline, but sometimes I had to stand on the sidelines. He also wrote that he occasionally volunteered during the tournament to work the scorers table, end quote. There could have been players or coaches asking me how many fouls they had or how many free throws they had missed.
Meanwhile, local tournaments that aren't bound by USA Basketball or safe sport rules are free to make their own decisions. In an interview conducted before Myers guilty plea, Eddie Clements, director of game time basketball, one of the state's largest organizers of club tournaments, said, we follow our own guidelines, and I know Mark well. He said that safe sport didn't affect game times, privately organized events and that while the case was still pending, Myers was eligible to coach.
Once I have documentation that he pleaded guilty or the judge finds him guilty, the court system finds him guilty, and at that point, game time will make a move. Clemens confirmed to Texas monthly on May 23 that mark will not be allowed to coach at our tournaments after the guilty plea.
Other event organizers have pleaded ignorance on the allegations. Michael Robertson, the founder of Central Texas based rise up tournament series, said he learned of Myers suspension only when contacted by Texas Monthly and that an email letter sent by Reichert's lawyer in June of 2023 informing him of the suspension, containing copies of the arrest affidavit, went to his spam folder. Quote, we will make sure that he is not on any of our benches, Robertson said. But he added that he believed the ultimate responsibility for keeping young players safe rested with their parents. The only way that this man will ever not be coaching girls basketball is if those parents step up and decide that they don't want this man coaching their teams, he said.
Even Myers recent guilty plea doesn't appear to have made much difference to some within the club basketball community. On May 11, four days after he pleaded guilty in Lampassas, Myers could be seen once more offering instruction to Phoenix select players from the sideline of a tournament at Leander's premier athletic complex. Albright and Reichert both struggle with the thought that telling their stories may not change much. The system that's supposed to be in place to protect athletes is actually in place to protect successful coaches, Reichert said. That's a hard thing to accept. Albright feels similarly but searches for a silver lining.
Mark could very well keep coaching after this. That's an outcome we have to accept, she said. But if kids and parents have this information, no one can take that away. Mark can't do anything about that.
One day last October, Albright said she met with a salesperson to discuss building a backyard basketball court for her children. The visitor mentioned that his own young daughter played the game and that he'd just signed her up for a club team. The program, he told her, had come highly recommended. Phoenix select Albright didn't say anything in the moment, but the next week she called him and suggested he research Mark Myers before trusting his daughter with the coach. The salesperson was taken aback and thanked.
[00:33:00] Speaker C: Her for the warning.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: He asked me if I had a daughter who played for him, she said. I told him no, it was me.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: These articles are important because it alerts people, parents, to what could be going on. Since the article was published, another girl's family has come forward in a nearby Texas town who had a similar experience. So it can give girls the space to come forward and talk about, oh, that happened to me also, and I didn't feel right about it at the time, but I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what to call it.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: What to label it.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: But if they've read about it or just saw something on social media about it, and it can give them the opportunity to speak up.
It's such an important thing and a healing thing for them to be able to talk to their family about what they went through. The takeaway from this, there's a few things. One of the things I know that really bothers me and bothers some of the victims here is like when this was posted, the attitude of some people in the comments about, well, you know, it didn't happen to most of the girls. So is it really that big of a deal?
That's infuriating because it's not a math equation where, you know, he is going to get credit for the girls that he didn't sexually harass or abuse. You know, it's when there's anyone, anyone is too many.
Another thing about this whole topic is this is such a major concern for all youth sports.
I want this. This article obviously raises awareness, and that's why I'm doing doing a podcast episode about it. But since this Texas monthly article came out also, the basketball club tweeted that Mark was stepping away from the club. While that is a great step, but parents don't be fooled by this move or similar situations.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: Researcher coaches listen, talk, talk to parents.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Talk to your kids. Stay tuned in to what's happening behind.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Closed doors with your kids.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: These adults spend so much time with our kids. We have to do more diligence than we think. Unfortunately, to make sure that our trust of what's happening. When we drop off our kids and there's closed practices or situations where they're.
[00:35:21] Speaker C: With these adults, we have to do.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: More due diligence and listen to our kids more, ask more questions, double triple check that they're feeling okay about everything.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: Let's all help protect youth athletes from.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Adults that are behaving badly. We want to help youth athletes so that their journeys in sports are positive.
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Listening.
Hopefully you learned something that could help you or someone else in the future have a better experience.
[00:35:54] Speaker C: We will see you next time on hustle and pro.
