Ex-players, father say Northern Kentucky women's basketball is 'toxic environment'

Shar’Rae Davis was at the top of her game and ready to win a championship her senior year at Northern Kentucky University. She says that season turned disastrous when the new women’s basketball coach, Camryn Whitaker, pitted the team against her and used her medical condition as punishment for her and her teammates.

Davis has severe ulcerative colitis, which causes unexpected, urgent trips to the bathroom. Sometimes they came in the middle of practice or during the national anthem. Other times she had to be hospitalized and would miss practice, which then resulted in sitting on the bench.

“It made me feel hopeless,” Davis said in an interview. “Like 'wow, there’s nothing I can do to fix currently what I have.'”

One day in the middle of a drill, Davis had to run out of practice suddenly to get to the bathroom. Whitaker blew her whistle and demanded the team “get on the line.” Whitaker yelled down the hallway at Davis and to other players that they were going to run sprints until Davis returned.

Davis and other players say Whitaker also banned the team from eating with Davis at restaurants on away trips, sitting next to her on the bus and even sharing a hotel room. They say it was known on the team that if you associated with Davis you were going to be exiled, lose playing time and be berated.

“I felt like I had this virus,” Davis said. “People were afraid.”

Davis remembers the night an assistant coach scribbled out her teammates’ name on the list of roommates so that Davis would be alone.

“I just started crying,” said Davis, who was a senior at the time. “She tried her hardest to break me away from the team.”

Davis, who’s now 24 and living back home in Michigan, was afraid to speak out about her experience at NKU and didn’t think anyone would listen. Then last week, her former teammate Taryn Taugher posted an article on Odyssey describing the “emotional abuse” and “bullying” Davis and the team faced.

“I just don’t want this to happen to anyone else again,” Davis said. “This isn’t about me. It’s about the future. And it’s time for us to rally together and be together on this, because it’s the truth.”

Three other former players have backed up Taugher and Davis’ claims of verbal attacks and fear of Whitaker. Meanwhile, eight current NKU players posted a letter on Odyssey on the weekend, saying they backed the coach.

The letter signed by players Grace White, Taylor Clos, Grayson Rose, Jazmyne Geist, Kailey Coffey, Molly Glick, Ally Niece and Emmy Souder does not address the specifics charged by Taugher and other former players. But the letter, which also never names Whitaker, added that the demands and hardships the team has faced "are not and have not exceeded the expected amount" for a Division I athlete.

None of the eight could be reached for comment.

The university said Monday night it will conduct an "independent, external review and assessment" of the women's basketball program in response to new concerns raised by former student-athletes.

NKU spokeswoman Anna Wright told The Cincinnati Enquirer that the new statement was in response to the latest story on players' claims of "emotional abuse" by head coach Camryn Whitaker. 

"Northern Kentucky University values all of its students, including its student-athletes," Wright said in the statement. She did not explain the new concerns that the university is looking into. The university is still determining who will do the review, according to Wright. 

Whitaker was not available for comment or an interview.

Taugher, a 22-year-old senior, started writing the article on the bus ride home from the last game of the 2018-19 season.  

She said she was relieved when the season was over, despite losing by 16 points in their final game against Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. Taugher was ready to tell her story without fear of retribution from coach Whitaker. She said she felt like she owed it to herself, her teammates and future recruits interested in NKU who shouldn’t be treated like they are disposable.

About 2,300 words and several edits later, Taugher posted the article. The Odyssey is an online media company that publishes crowd-sourced material and is popular among college students. The article was viewed more nearly 100,000 times in one week and caught attention from national news outlets. The current players’ posting had over 11,000 views as of Monday morning.

“In the end, I don’t care what happens to coach Whitaker,” Taugher said. “I just want to promote a better environment for my teammates that are still there.”

NKU 'toxic environment,' player's dad says

Taugher said in an interview that Whitaker stripped away her love of the game of basketball and the life she had built around it. The intimidation, manipulation, humiliation and verbal attacks from Whitaker were incessant, Taugher said.

"You're selfish!"

"Do you even have a brain?"

"I don't have a place for you on this team!"

"You have no idea what 'mean' looks like! I can show you mean!"

A college coach is not just a normal authority figure. Their approval and disapproval can shape a player’s future, confidence and self-worth. The game that used to bring Taugher joy and relief became a source of pain, anxiety and fear. This coach made her feel worthless. 

After practice one day during her junior season, Whitaker “told me I sucked the life out of her” and “out of the team,” Taugher said. That moment made her feel disposable and the negative thoughts swarmed in her head.

“It had me questioning my own life,” Taugher said. “I wanted to play for her and make her proud of me. I just didn’t feel important anymore.”

That feeling of dread and darkness followed her around campus, from the court in BB&T Arena to her bedroom to her classrooms. The pressure to perform on the court, to get good grades and maintain a social life was nearly impossible.

“I now understand why college athletes commit suicide,” Taugher wrote in her article. “Between the anxiety, and lack of sleep and appetite from the constant attacks on my character and my family, I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college students, although a national rate among athletes is unclear. A 2015 University of Washington study looking at athlete deaths found that 35 NCAA student athletes died by suicide between 2003 and 2012, which is about 7 percent of all student-athlete deaths.

Athletes' mental health is a priority for the NCAA, which works with medical professionals to provide education and resources for athletes, coaches and athletics administrators.

Taugher said she was one of Whitaker’s “emotional punching bags” from the first day she stepped onto the court as the new coach in 2016.

“There’s a line between constructive criticism and degrading somebody," said Taugher, who came to the university under a different coach.

Taugher said many of the verbal attacks were in meetings behind closed doors, in her office on what Whitaker called the “crying couch.” That’s where Whitaker would “get you alone and tear you apart.”

During those “beat-up sessions” Whitaker would attack their “family, personality, work-ethic and body physique,” Taugher said. These meetings were often done weekly and before games, which hurt performance.

Whitaker demanded players and coach call her ma’am, to make it known that she was in charge, Taugher said. Whitaker talked about her players being on leashes, which Taugher said made the players sound like they were “animals that she could control.” And the length of your leash determined how many mistakes you could make before being pulled out of a game, which “stole our confidence.”

Players said they were afraid to go to the gym and felt nauseous when they saw their coach.

Taugher acknowledges that collegiate level coaches have a certain power that can be intimidating. She says yelling is part of the game and she’s motivated by that intense kind of coaching. 

But Taugher said what happened in Norse practices was emotional abuse, which includes “insults and attempts to scare, isolate, or control you,” according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

She said Whitaker would do anything to make certain players feel isolated from the rest of the team.

Another player, Reece Mungar, refused to meet with Whitaker without her parents present on one game day. Munger said she was then forbidden to attend the shootaround before the game, the game itself, and in the locker room. Players said Whitaker told them Mungar was a “f------ bad friend and teammate.”

After two years of hearing about and seeing a “toxic environment,” Barry Mungar stepped in to keep his daughter “mentally and physically safe.” He said he contacted the athletic director and Title IX office, sent a letter to NKU’s president and spoke to the university’s NCAA compliance officials about the problems.

The Enquirer has requested Whitaker’s personnel records, including Title IX complaints.

Mungar, who’s currently a sophomore, is now in the process of transferring schools.

“This is not about playing time. This is about a morally and ethically corrupt coach,” Mungar’s father, Barry Mungar said in an interview. “It’s an NCAA nightmare.”

He said this is an “ongoing, chronic, three-year problem and it’s going to continue next year.”

Players make Title IX complaints, leave school

Eight women’s basketball players have either quit or transferred and two coaches have left the program since Whitaker came on board, according to Taugher’s article. The team hasn’t had a winning season since Whitaker was hired.

At least two players, Taugher and Kasey Uetrecht, have gone to the Title IX office for help, yet they say no university officials contacted them after their initial meetings.

Uetrecht, who is from Oregonia, Ohio, was a junior on the team when she left the team in the middle of the night at that same away trip that Davis described having her own hotel room. After enduring and witnessing the abuse that season under Whitaker, she said she felt like there was no other way out.

“I was at such a low point in my life,” Uetrecht said in an interview. “I had never felt so broken before and she had completely destroyed any confidence or love for the game I had.”

With about two weeks left in the 2016-17 season, Uetrecht’s parents picked her up from that hotel and drove her home.

“I just started crying because I left this weight lifted off of my shoulders that she didn’t have control over me anymore,” Uetrecht said.

Uetrecht and her parents met with coach Whitaker and the athletic director when the team returned to campus. They agreed to honor Uetrecht’s scholarship through the end of the year, but she was wasn’t allowed to be around the women’s basketball team or athletic facilities. She even had to move out of her off-campus apartment because she lived with other basketball players.

The next fall, Uetrecht wrote a paper about Whitaker for an assignment. Her professor shared the paper with the chair of the department who then shared it with the Title IX office. In December 2017, she met with Deputy Title IX Coordinator Ann James, who she says told her they would looking into it and talk to the athletic department. But, according to Uetrecht, no investigation ever came from that meeting, she was never contacted further, and Whitaker kept coaching.

“My situation was just shoved out of the way and swept under the rug,” Uetrecht said. “That’s the most frustrating thing.”

The abuse continued into the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons, Taugher says, and players felt powerless because complaints to the athletic department about Whitaker’s behavior were ignored.

Taugher said she went to the Title IX office in December 2018 to file a complaint and was not contacted after the initial meeting. Davis and Uetrecht also say they were never contacted about an interview, even though they were mentioned in Taugher’s complaint.

After Taugher's report, she said Whitaker found out that one of the players went to Title IX. Taugher said during a team meeting in the film room Whitaker said, "I don't know who's trying to ruin my life… but I want to let you know that I am invincible and I am not going anywhere. I am your coach. I signed a contract and I'm not going anywhere."

Taugher finished out this past season, knowing it would be her last because Whitaker was not going to honor her fifth year of eligibility.

“My heart was broken, and my time was cut short with some of my best friends I have ever had,” Taugher wrote in her article. She said she would not wish this experience on anyone.

Taugher and Davis are currently both coaching high school girls basketball teams, which they say has brought a new perspective to the abuse they say they endured at NKU.

“For a while, I was blaming myself,” Davis said. “I was trying to bury it, I was almost validating the things that she did. Now that I’m coaching, I know for sure what she was doing was wrong.”

Davis has gone through multiple coaching staffs at the collegiate level and said she’s learned the difference between someone “who’s going to break your house down and build you a better house” and someone who is “just breaking your house down.”

“I’m stronger because of the things I’ve endured,” Davis said. “All the years that I played have made me better and they’ve shown me what not to do.”