Nine Pierson High School varsity basketball players, five of them seniors, have left the team, frustrated by the behavior of the head coach, Dan White.
Many of their parents, and some members of the team, spoke up about the situation at a Sag Harbor School Board meeting on Monday night. After the meeting, two sets of parents offered more details about their sons’ decisions, claiming they had been called names and singled out by Mr. White during practice.
One incident was caught on video on Dec. 26 when some junior varsity players attended practice with the varsity team. Pierson uses a service called Hudl to record its games and scrimmages in the high school gym. The team was originally supposed to scrimmage against Mount Sinai, but even though the game was canceled, the recording proceeded as planned.
At around 58 minutes into the recording the team began running a passing drill up and down the court. As one group was completing its drill, at around 59 minutes and 52 seconds, a jayvee athlete took a shot and missed it. One of the varsity players laughed.
A few minutes later, after one more group ran the drill — about an hour into the recording, the coach lined the team up to talk.
“When jayvee kids are spending time at a varsity practice, the last thing that kid deserves is to be made fun of,” Mr. White said by phone on Tuesday.
The video shows Mr. White saying to the student who had laughed at the jayvee player: “The way you practice is f***ing embarrassing, got it? Start laughing at yourself for that.”
“There was a varsity player making fun of a jayvee player and I’m not going to tolerate that,” Mr. White said Tuesday. “I shouldn’t have cursed and I apologize for that.”
Because of rules about discussions of personnel, Mr. White, a varsity coach for 16 years at Pierson, East Hampton, and then Pierson again, was not mentioned by name by school officials at Monday’s meeting, but on Tuesday, Sag Harbor’s superintendent, Jeff Nichols, said by phone that “the district doesn’t condone the use of profanity,” adding, “we addressed that matter but the details we’ve addressed are confidential.”
“Listen, these kids are 17 years old,” Diane Wayne, a parent, said after the board meeting. “They could take a little toughness, but just embarrassing them and just degrading them is really above and beyond.”
Ms. Wayne was the first to speak during the public input section of Monday’s meeting, and began her comments by highlighting the benefits playing sports can have on students while also stressing the importance of maintaining a safe environment for the student athletes.
“The coach should recognize that the student athletes ‘are young men and women with human frailties and limitations who are capable of making mistakes,’ " Ms. Wayne said, quoting from Section XI’s guidelines for the behavior of coaches. Section XI is the governing body for public high school athletics in Suffolk County.
“I’m asking the administration and the board,” Ms. Wayne said, “to focus during the evaluation and retention process for all coaches on ensuring that those individuals who will be serving as mentors to student athletes, exhibit appropriate behavior consistent with the mission of education-based athletics to promote the well-being of young people.”
During the board’s second public input section, John Greenwald, another parent, asked the board, “Does the Sag Harbor School District’s code of conduct policy apply to members of its faculty, administrators, and volunteers?” and, “if so, are violators of said policy in the same degree treated equally regardless of who the offender is?”
In response, Mr. Nichols indicated that the policy does apply to faculty and staff, but declined to answer the second question to avoid “getting into confidential material.”
Deirdre Greenwald, speaking after the meeting, clarified that her husband’s question came as a result of watching the video on Hudl and also reflecting on their son’s punishment for using similar language on school property.
“We witnessed the coach saying that to another player, and then there was a scrimmage like maybe a day or two later and the coach was there, coaching the game,” she said. “Whatever the punishment was, it wasn’t the same as my son who was suspended from school and also basketball practice.”
While speaking by phone on Tuesday Mr. Nichols stressed that while he cannot go into full details on personnel matters, steps had been taken after the students left the team.
“I conducted an investigation and completed it, and shared the results with the board,” Mr. Nichols said. “The board has been apprised of the findings.”
Mr. White says that he has “no ill will towards the seniors” who left the team and stands by the way he has coached.
“If you were to ask anyone who is on the team right now or kids that played last year they’d say I care more about the kids and their improvement as players than my own life,” Mr. White said.
In fact, several of the sophomores on the team attended the meeting Monday night, and three spoke about their positive experiences on the team this year.
Addressing the board, Casey Finelli emphasized how his experience this year helped him understand the importance of working as a team. He and the other speakers touched on how they had come to the team focused on their own individual skills and with large egos, but by working together with the coaches they grew past that and became stronger, both on and off the court.
“Looking back,” Casey said, “I could honestly say that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the unwavering support of my coaches.”
Additionally, Lance Schroeder, a recent graduate of Pierson who is in his first year at Stony Brook University, told the board about how his experience at Pierson, and with Pierson athletics, had helped prepare him for life after high school.
“I believe that our culture here has bolstered a sense of taking accountability for your actions,” he said, “not hiding from your mistakes but learning from them and really internalizing them and moving on.”
Ms. Wayne and the other parents initially hoped that Mr. White would be removed from his position so that their sons could rejoin the team. With Mr. White holding onto the position, their hope is now for the board to take their comments into consideration for next year.
“At this point, it’s just about the principle,” Ms. Wayne said. “I think it’s too late in the season now for my son to come back, but you know, it’s justice for my son.”
Mr. White, who is also a phys ed teacher at Pierson, returned as the varsity basketball coach in the 2023-24 season after seven years coaching East Hampton High School’s varsity boys, who made the playoffs three times under during his tenure there.
The defection of the six seniors, two of whom were starters, leaves him with nine players on the squad, most of them sophomores. He has no juniors. Still, he said, a win at Babylon on Thursday would clinch a Class B playoff spot for the Whalers, who are, at the moment, 2-1 vs. “B” teams.
With Reporting by Jack Graves