When a high school student and coach collide, Kansas officials’ sympathy doesn’t flow equally

Possibly the best definition of modern racism came from journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who described it as “broad sympathy for some, broad skepticism of others.”

This axiom came to mind recently during an email exchange with a private school administrator who seemed unbothered by secretly recorded comments his basketball coach, Mitch Fiegel, made about a biracial student athlete and his family. The coach said he wouldn’t touch that “family with a 10-foot pole,” and that he didn’t “believe the student was a good person.”

So, what’s a dealbreaker? What goes too far? I considered the coach’s behavior a dealbreaker. The school and the Kansas State High School Athletic Association did not. Wichita Collegiate officials and the state’s high school athletics governing body have expressed “regret” for the championship coach’s remarks, made while speaking to a caller claiming to work as a Georgetown University assistant coach.

Schools and KSHSAA hold players accountable, herding them in front of virtually all-white panels (as I wrote in February). But both entities seemed unwilling or uninterested in holding this coach accountable. Worse, they didn’t inform the student or his parents.

This lack of accountability, transparency, and ethics indicates the need for vigorous reform, including greater diversity at KSHSAA, greater scrutiny of coaches, more transparency and more appellate options.

I contacted the student’s father, whom I know well. He declined to comment, citing legal advice. The father said neither Collegiate nor KSHSAA contacted him about the recording.

A few years ago, the student athlete played for Fiegel before transferring and later facing his old coach in a substate playoff game. The player carried his new team to a win. Near the end of the game, he took a victory bow in front of his old coach and was suspended for the first half of the next game.

Later, someone phoned Fiegel claiming to be a recruiter for Georgetown University and asked for an evaluation of the student athlete.

Fiegel said, “But deep down, do I believe he’s a good kid from a good family? I wouldn’t touch them with a 10-foot pole.”

The caller later asked whether the student was a “good kid.”

Said Fiegel: “Let me tell you what he did. … He came over in front of my bench and bowed. In front of me. And everybody saw it. I have never had anybody do anything like that in 35 years of coaching.”

In another indication he knew he was harming the student, Fiegel said: “My name comes up in this, I’ll be so pissed I can’t see straight. I need to be done with this family, done with this kid.”

He again targets the student.

“I wish I could tell you this kid was a great human being, but I don’t believe that. I wish I did,” Fiegel said on the recording.

Not the most vicious attack ever, but enough to do reputational damage. Today, this student is a college basketball player who mulled standout academic offers from Baylor, Oklahoma, Southern Methodist University, the University of Kansas, Kansas State University and Wichita State University.

I’m guessing they thought he was a good kid from a good family.

Still, the explanatory emailed comments from Collegiate and from the executive director of KSHSAA seemed more focused on the kid than on the coach.

For example, Collegiate’s head of school Nathan Washer said the student “ran directly in front of our bench and our coach and taunted him in a manner that shocked all who witnessed it.”

Actually, video doesn’t show the student running to the bench. The player had just been standing there.

A bow seems benign, compared to that description that seemed designed to make the coach’s comments more palatable. In a sports culture that has moved from “It’s not whether you win or lose it’s how you play the game,” to, “in your face!” a bow isn’t shocking.

Washer said: “It is clear … that this call was set up by someone to try and lead coach Fiegel into saying something negative about the student in question. This is a case of a coach referring to the behavior of this particular student and is not a pattern of behavior as your earlier questions suggest.”

Washer didn’t mention Fiegel barely survived an ouster campaign in recent years.

KSHSAA executive director Bill Faflick said his office “has had nothing recent relative to coach Fiegel or Wichita Collegiate School. Several years ago, we did get an anonymous communication (mailing with voice memo, no return address or name attached).”

Faflick said: “Consistent with our anonymous communication protocol, the information was sent to the school for review. … The concern had nothing to do with KSHSAA rules, nor was a safety risk referenced or inferred. I do not believe an athlete’s name was included in the voice memo (the last name was used). It was an issue that would fall under local school purview.”

So, neither entity considered Fiegel’s words a dealbreaker.

This essentially proves my point that both entities need more diverse voices. Fiegel still works for Collegiate. This feels like a coverup. What we allow, it seems, we endorse.

Fiegel received broad sympathy. The student, broad skepticism. Typically, the Black child endured harsher punishment. He deserved at worst a technical for the bow, but a conversation on the bench could have sufficed. The half-game suspension reflected Fiegel’s caste status, not the bow.

Greater diversity in the system creates more people who would understand and sympathize with the travails of Black athletes.

We (myself and my editors) have decided not to identify the student nor embed audio from the call. We did this to protect the student.

I only wish these institutions had sympathized more with the student, rather than circling the wagons around a thin-skinned coach.

Mark McCormick is the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.