Reporting by The Associated Press about abusive culture in Oregon State's volleyball program led to an outpouring of similar stories from the coach's homeland of Australia, where a four-year process led officials there to apologize to athletes who had played in his program.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation published a story Saturday quoting players who read the AP reporting in 2020 about Oregon State's Mark Barnard and, according to one, felt "it was like reading one of our own training sessions.”
“I just started shaking, my heart started racing,” one player, Selina Scoble, told ABC.
Scoble said her difficulties on the team “snowballed into depression and bulimia, and I have a lot of shame and guilt around that.”
The AP investigation cited more than a dozen players who told of an abusive culture at Oregon State. Among their allegations were that Barnard, who left the program in 2022, pitted players against each other in team meetings while he was there and pushed them past health warnings in practice as punishment.
The so-called coach-on-one drills the Oregon State players described — in which coaches make players dive after difficult-to-retrieve balls they throw — were the same drills Barnard ran as both an assistant, then later the head coach at what was then Australia's nascent women's volleyball program being run by the country's Institute of Sport.
“On any given day, we were fearful for our physical being, for our emotional being,” Elizabeth Brett, one of the first players recruited to the Australian team, told ABC.
Brett quit volleyball after the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where the Aussie women finished ninth.
“I still don’t sleep on Sunday nights,” Brett said. “That physiological response stayed with me and the anxiety around it.”
ABC said the day after the AP report came out, Volleyball Australia, which oversees elite and Olympic volleyball in the country, published a letter of support for Barnard on its Facebook page, and that the letter galvanized the players and motivated them to speak up.
“That post itself was infuriating for the group, because it was without any consultation with any of the past players,” said one of the players, Rowena Morgan.
Morgan described Barnard as a coach who could diffuse situations when he served as an assistant but said his personality changed once he became the man in charge.
“He would yell abuse and nothing was good enough,” Morgan told ABC. “You know: ‘You’re (expletive) useless. You’re weak. If you played any other sport, you’d never get anywhere. You’re pathetic. You disgust me.’ That sort of thing.”
The players' outpouring triggered a review by Sports Integrity Australia, which included interviews with 27 participants, including medical staff, and 16 written submissions.
The review, completed in 2022, found the program from 1997-2005 fostered a culture of fear and punishment, unacceptable training practices, an inadequate complaints-handling procedure, a lack of coach accountability and limited athlete support.
It took two more years for Volleyball Australia to issue a public apology to the players. Without mentioning Barnard or Brad Saindon, who served as head coach of the Aussie program before him, with Barnard as his assistant, the apology acknowledged the former players suffered through “an environment of fear."
As part of the AP reporting, Oregon State disputed allegations that players were pushed past their physical limits as punishment and said “appropriate action was taken” after an internal investigation into Barnard's program.
The OSU players said they never felt heard by the university and that their complaints were either swept under the rug or not looked into appropriately.
Two of the players who spoke to the AP said they considered suicide. One of them, upon reading the first AP story in the series, said she “genuinely thought the article was written about me,” even thought it was about a different player.
Both those players were among more than a dozen who quit or transferred from the Oregon State program during Barnard's tenure, with some saying they were forced out.
The coach, who came to Oregon State as an assistant in 2005, then went 70-132 over seven seasons as head coach, left the school after the 2022 season. The school thanked him for his “long-time commitment to our athletic department” but made no mention of the abuse allegations.
Barnard did not immediately return messages left by the AP seeking his comment about the ABC report. Saindon told ABC, “I’m not that kind of a coach, I’ve never done that in my whole coaching career, let alone to the young women on the national team in Australia.”
After the first two AP stories were published, Oregon State went to court to fight the AP's efforts to obtain documents related to Barnard's case. The AP received a favorable ruling from the local district attorney when it first pressed for the documents, but the university spent more than two years fighting the disclosure. Oregon State ultimately paid the AP’s legal fees in exchange for AP agreeing to drop the request.
During the legal wrangling, Oregon State spokesman Steve Clark said the school fought the disclosure because if records were released, it "would have a chilling effect and potentially stymie people with concerns from ever reporting allegations of wrongdoing.”
AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports
FILE - In this undated photo Oregon State volleyball coach Mark Barnard poses for a photo in Corvallis, Ore. (Godofredo Vasquet/Albany Democrat-Herald via AP, File)/Albany Democrat-Herald via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden kicked off his final holiday season at the White House on Monday by issuing the traditional reprieve to two turkeys who will bypass the Thanksgiving table to live out their days in southern Minnesota.
The 82-year-old president welcomed 2,500 guests to the South Lawn under sunny skies as he cracked jokes about the fates of “Peach” and “Blossom” and sounded wistful tones about the last weeks of his presidency after a half-century in Washington power circles.
“It’s been the honor of my life. I’m forever grateful,” Biden said, taking note of his impending departure on Jan. 20, 2025. That's when power will transfer to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, the man that Biden defeated four years ago and was battling again until he was pressured to bow out of the race amid concerns about his age and viability.
Until Inauguration Day, the president and first lady Jill Biden will continue a busy run of festivities that will double as their long goodbye. The White House schedule in December is replete with holiday parties for various constituencies, from West Wing staff to members of Congress and the White House press corps.
Biden relished the brief ceremony with the pardoned turkeys, named for the official flower of the president's home state of Delaware.
“The peach pie in my state is one of my favorites,” he said during remarks that were occasionally interrupted by Peach gobbling atop the table to Biden's right. “Peach is making a last-minute plea,” Biden said at one point, drawing laughter from an overflow crowd that included Cabinet members, White House staff and their families, and students from 4H programs and Future Farmers of America chapters.
Biden introduced Peach as a bird who “lives by the motto, ‘Keep calm and gobble on.’” Blossom, the president said, has a different motto: “No fowl play. Just Minnesota nice.”
Peach and Blossom came from the farm of John Zimmerman, near the southern Minnesota city of Northfield. Zimmerman, who has raised about 4 million turkeys, is president of the National Turkey Federation, the group that has gifted U.S. presidents Thanksgiving turkeys since the Truman administration after World War II. President Harry Truman, however, preferred to eat the birds. Official pardon ceremonies did not become an annual White House tradition until the administration of President George H.W. Bush in 1989.
With their presidential reprieve, Peach and Blossom will live out their days at Farmamerica, an agriculture interpretative center near Waseca in southern Minnesota. The center's aim is to promote agriculture and educate future farmers and others about agriculture in America.
Later Monday, first lady Jill Biden will receive delivery of the official White House Christmas tree that will be on display in the Blue Room. Then the Bidens will travel to New York City for an evening “Friendsgiving” event at a Coast Guard station on Staten Island.
Biden began his valedictory calendar Friday night with a gala for hundreds of his friends, supporters and staff members who gathered in a pavilion erected on the South Lawn, with a view out to the Lincoln Memorial.
Cabinet secretaries, Democratic donors and his longest-serving staff members came together to hear from the president and pay tribute, with no evidence that Biden was effectively forced from the Democratic ticket this summer and watched Vice President Kamala Harris suffer defeat on Nov. 5.
“I’m so proud that we’ve done all of this with a deep belief in the core values of America,” said Biden, sporting a tuxedo for the black-tie event. Setting aside his criticisms of Trump as a fundamental threat to democracy, Biden added his characteristic national cheerleading: “I fully believe that America is better positioned to lead the world today than at any point in my 50 years of public service.”
The first lady toasted her husband with a nod to his 2020 campaign promise to “restore the soul of the nation,” in Trump’s aftermath. With the results on Election Day, however, Biden’s four years now become sandwiched in the middle of an era dominated by Trump's presence on the national stage and in the White House.
Even as the first couple avoided the context surrounding the president's coming exit, those political realities were nonetheless apparent, as younger Democrats like Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Biden's Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg not only raised their glasses to the president but held forth with many attendees who could remain in the party's power circles in the 2028 election cycle and beyond.
President Joe Biden, center right, departs with his grandson Beau Biden after pardoning the national Thanksgiving turkeys during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Joe Biden, center right, departs with his grandson Beau Biden after pardoning the national Thanksgiving turkeys during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Joe Biden speaks after pardoning the national Thanksgiving turkey, Peach, during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Joe Biden speaks and pardons the national Thanksgiving turkey, Peach, during a pardoning ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024, as John Zimmerman, chair of the National Turkey Federation and his son Grant, look on. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Beau Biden, grandson of President Joe Biden, is pictured with the national Thanksgiving turkeys, Peach and Blossom, after a pardoning ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Joe Biden is pictured with John Zimmerman, chair of the National Turkey Federation, from left, and Zimmerman's son Grant, after pardoning the national Thanksgiving turkey Peach during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Joe Biden pardons one of the national Thanksgiving turkeys, Peach, during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Beau Biden, left, looks at Peach, the national Thanksgiving turkey who was pardoned by President Joe Biden, during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. Grant Zimmerman, son of John Zimmerman, chair of the National Turkey Federation, watches at right. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
President Joe Biden stands with one of the national Thanksgiving turkeys, Peach, during a pardoning ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Joe Biden, right, stands with John Zimmerman, left, chair of the National Turkey Federation, his son Grant Zimmerman, center, and the national Thanksgiving turkey, Peach, during a pardoning ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
The national Thanksgiving turkeys Peach and Blossom are pictured before a pardoning ceremony with President Joe Biden on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Beau Biden, grandson of President Joe Biden, is pictured with the national Thanksgiving turkeys, Peach and Blossom, after a pardoning ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Joe Biden is pictured after pardoning the national Thanksgiving turkey, Peach, during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
