Up First from NPR - Emotional Abuse in College Sports

Episode Date: March 15, 2026

March Madness is here. The high-stakes, sudden-death college basketball tournament is a beloved tradition in American sports.  For the players, it’s a chance to showcase the skills they’ve developed through years of hard training of the body and mind. In many cases, that push produces incredible feats of athletic performance. But an investigation by reporters Julia Haney and Elizabeth Santos has found instances in which athletes allege that the push from coaches goes too far. Emotional abuse by coaches, some athletes maintain, can cause lasting, even irreparable damage. On this episode of The Sunday Story, we hear from athletes who fought back.*A warning that today’s story includes mentions of sexual and emotional abuse, suicide, bullying and includes explicit language.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. And just a heads up, today's story includes mentions of sexual and emotional abuse, suicide and bullying, and includes explicit language. We know all too well the stories of the sexual abuse of college athletes. A former U.S. Olympic gymnastics team doctor pleaded guilty to child's sexual abuse. in Michigan State Court today. Child sex abuse charges have now stained a legendary story of college football, the long-running success story of Penn State. In some cases, the violation of athletes by people who were supposed to care for them went on for years. Sometimes those with power to stop the abuse did little or nothing. How could this have happened to so many athletes

and for so long? Today's story asked that same question. But we're talking about a different kind of abuse of power. I've seen her call us useless, stupid, incompetent. When we couldn't complete a drill at her level, I've seen my teammates crying. When we come back, a look at the complicated issue of emotional abuse in college sports. We're back with the Sunday story, and joining us now are reporters Julia Haney and Elizabeth of Santos. They've been investigating the issue of emotional abuse in college sports for the past year. Julia and Elizabeth, welcome to the podcast. It's great to be here. Thanks for having us.

So Julia and Elizabeth, I think many of us are familiar with the stories of coaches who are really tough and demanding of their players. But your reporting is about something different. You've been looking into the issue of emotional abuse in college sports. That's right, Ayesha. We found that emotional abuse can look different from coach to coach. But there are specific patterns, things like verbal attacks, manipulation, and controlling behaviors. That's just to name a few. And we're not talking about one-off moments where a coach, for example, loses their temper.

We're talking about persistent behaviors that begin to impact student athletes' mental. well-being, and the stakes can be high. So what does that look like in practice? To really explain that, we want to tell you about Julia Pernsteiner, a student athlete in Jacksonville, Florida. We cannot get her story out of our heads. She was a D-1 cross-country runner at Jacksonville University. Her friends, teammates, and those who are close with her describe her as determined and goofy. They say that she had a powerful, intuitive read on people.

And in the fall of 2021, Pernsteiner started making a series of phone calls. She called everyone she could think of to report that her track coach was abusive. The coach, Ronald Grigg, was the longtime head of the program. I mean, you said she was calling everyone? Like, what do you mean by that? Everyone. Well, in a legal complaint filed by her family, it's clear that Pernstiner reached out to a lot of people about Greg's alleged behavior. including her colleges, administrators, trainers, and the Jacksonville University Athletic Department.

Perenstiner also called the university's counseling center, a local hospital, a law firm, a legal aid group, a women's center, local and national nonprofits, news organizations, and the NCAA. That's according to a local TV reporter who later went through Perinsteiner's call log. And an off-duty officer for the sheriff's department even came to speak with her. He was working as a campus security officer at the time. And it was actually the body camera footage that really stood out to us. That same local TV reporter, Samantha Mathers, posted the footage on YouTube. In this clip, which is a little scratchy, you can hear Julia Pernsteiner telling the officer how her coach was treating her. You'd be like, why do I keep you around?

Like you're not smart. You're not fast. Like, why do I keep you around? And he kept saying that, like, basically like mind-fucking me telling you to, like, go kill your stuff. And she says, one time I was talking with him and he said, he was like, I've never hit you, have I? The officer asks. So has he physically touched you? No.

He's a point. Okay. No. So Pern Steiner isn't saying that Grigg physically touched her or physically hit her or anything. Right. She says he humiliated and degraded her. But there was nothing the officer could do about that. Here he is again.

The bad thing is that in Duval County, state of Florida, emotionally abusiveness isn't a crime. There's nothing criminal with, no crime has been committed with that. That's so fucked up. After some back and forth, the officer tells her, like I said, it's just not a criminal statute to make people feel bad. The question is whether the coach's alleged behavior went beyond that. Perenstiner's teammates say he called her things like retarded, useless, and the slowest fucking runner in the world.

Greg had actually cut Perenstiner from the team a month before she spoke with this officer, according to the family's legal complaint. So, I mean, that's going to raise the question. Like, was this someone who was just, you know, upset that she'd been kicked off the team? Well, but she wasn't the only student athlete who claimed they'd been mistreated. In recordings that Pernstein are made, she said she collected testimonials from 20 other athletes, and they told her that they'd experienced similar verbal abuse and body shaming. Right. They also alleged that he held scholarships over their heads and bullied women on the team. A volunteer assistant coach, Alexa Ibar, said she'd also been mistreated by Grig and told us that she had reported him to the athletic department.

A track team alum also told us that Julia was encouraging. teammates to submit complaints as well. But none of this made a difference on the day that Julia Pernsteiner met with that officer. After he left her that day, he wrote in his report, Julia made no criminal allegations and appeared in good physical health. Let us pray. Weeks later, Julia Pernsteiner took her life in her dorm room. She was 23 years old. Her funeral was held near her hometown in Minnesota and posted on YouTube. Oh, God, who have set a limit to this present life so as to open up an entry into eternity. Her uncle read a poem he wrote with the refrain, run free, Julia, run free.

Run free, Julia, run free. I know you are with God in heaven now. You made it to the finish line. I mean, that's beyond devastating, right? And I can't imagine what her family and teammates were going through. It was a really rough time for them. When we spoke to Sadie Morris, another runner, she said that the team was in shambles. My teammates weren't doing well when they came back after breaks.

She says she was still running well at practice, but others were struggling emotionally. According to Morris, Coach Grigg was frustrated. He was like, oh, so is your teammates going to use Julia's death as they get out of jail-free card? So what happened to the coach? So Coach Grigg continued to coach for the rest of that season after Perenstiner died. He resigned the following summer. He hasn't responded to our calls or emails requesting an interview. Perenstiner's family filed a wrongful death complaint against the university and Grig in

23, alleging, quote, he created a toxic atmosphere of humiliation and intimidation by belittling, disparaging, and ridiculing runners who did not meet his standards. They also allege that the school tolerated his behavior because Griggs' teams were competitive. He was head coach of the team for two decades, and during that time, hundreds of student athletes went through his program. The Pernsteiner family ultimately settled, so they can't talk to us, about the details, and in the settlement, there was no admission of wrongdoing by the university. We reached out to Jacksonville University for the story and didn't hear back.

But our reporting has found that the abuse Pernstiner alleged is not an outlier. Her story is just one of over 100 emotional abuse allegations that we've compiled dating back to 2011. We can't tell you all of these stories, but there's one more, one that ended differently that we wanted to share. In this other case, the allegations were taken seriously by a jury in a trial. And the legal decision that followed

could change how universities handle student athletes' claims of emotional abuse. We wanted for other athletes to know that they're not alone, to know that it's possible to fight this, to know that schools should do better. That story,

when we come back. We're back with the Sunday story, and reporters Julia Haney and Elizabeth Santos are talking about their reporting on emotional abuse in college sports. So Julia and Elizabeth, I understand that you're both working reporters now, but you started this story

while you were both in grad school. So how did you come across it? Well, I was on the hunt for a story and I heard about a situation that I thought was highlighting a case, of sexual abuse on a college sports team. But it turned out the issue was really one of emotional abuse. And that got me thinking that there was a story here,

one about student athletes grappling for accountability. And when Julia came to me with the story, I thought it was pretty powerful. So we decided to report it out together. So we've heard about the case of Julia Pernstiner. And you alluded to a different case, one that could change how allegations of emotional abuse of college athletes are handled. Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, but before we jump into that, it's important to know that researchers say emotional abuse in sports is more common than physical or sexual abuse. And you know, most of the student athletes we spoke to who reported it, they didn't get the outcome they were looking for. But every great sports story has a tenacious underdog, or in this case, too. And that's where our story starts, with Maria and Marta Ghalich, who filed a lawsuit back in 2021 against their head coach and the University of San Francisco, or USF. Maria and Marta are from Croatia. They told us they started playing basketball when they were little on their neighborhood court.

They both loved the game, but as people, they're very different. Here's Marta. Our family and people who know us very well often kind of describe us as Yinn and the Yang. Marta's the analytical one. She describes her sister Maria as the creative one. She was always more artsy, creative type. We're different, but very complimentary, I'd say. I mean, she's always the person I turn to, and we always has a different perspective that kind of complements mine.

And they knew how to play to each other's strengths. on and off the court. They even played for their Croatian national team. So it sounds like they were serious players. I mean, and enough to catch the eye of coaches in the U.S. Yeah, so once they were in high school, U.S. colleges started recruiting them. For Marta, she says it came down to Columbia and USF. But Columbia was only interested in her and not her sister. The University of San Francisco offered them both full rides for five years. I wanted to go with her. you're moving across the world to have someone, especially your closest person, go with you and share the same experience. So that definitely was a huge factor for me.

And they had become close with the new USF head coach, Molly Goodenbauer. Okay, so, you know, tell me a little bit more about Coach Goodenbauer. Well, Goodenbauer is from Iowa. She played basketball at Stanford for the legendary coach Tara Vandervier. She won two national championships. Stanford's got four three-pointers today, and Molly Goodenbauer's got them all. And when she was a player, Goodenbauer was a guard just like Marta. And in 2016, she took over the USF head coach job from a former Stanford teammate.

During the recruitment process, Maria and Marta recall Goodenbauer flying to Croatia multiple times to visit them. So it sounds like Goodenbauer was really making a big effort to recruit the twins. She definitely was. Here's Marta again. We took her around Croatia, around town. We showed her everything, obviously, like shared meals together, really made this connection. Between visits, the twins say that they were in regular touch. They both remember one moment in particular from one of Goodenbauer's visits.

What stayed with me is really kind of the sentence she shared at the end of one of her trips. And I remember my mom was there and my parents were there. And she, you know, promised my mom. and she told us like she would take care of us and, you know, your kids are in good hands. I know, like, as a parent myself, that's what you want to hear a coach said, right? Tell me more about the University of San Francisco.

USF is a Catholic school. It's small, progressive, and right in the center of the city. Its motto is, change the world from here. And you can see that printed on banners all over the hillside campus. It's a D-1 school, so its teams play at the highest level of college sports. Mari and Marta arrived in September 2018. It was Gooden Bauer's third year as head coach.

It seemed great and there were just no signs that things were going to go a completely different way than that they did. The team was young, lots of freshmen, and most of them were international students. But the twins said coach Goodenbauer seemed different almost immediately. on the court and after our arrival, she became this totally different person that I knew so far. What did they say was different about Coach Goodenbauer? Well, they were used to strict coaches, ones with high expectations,

ones who would yell at them, and they knew how to work hard. But when we spoke with Maria, she said Goodenbauer's tone was off. I've never really had anyone that, like mean and like personal. And when we spoke with Marta, she agreed. Yeah. The way she started treating players, the way she started treating us, the way she started talking to us, the language she started using the tone. What kinds of things would she say to you?

Here, Marta paused for a minute and when she opened her mouth to speak again, the word she says her coach used all came pouring out. She would call us idiot, stupid, worthless, low after low. She would say, you look like a fucking toothpick. She called us pieces of shit, you're fucking idiot, you're stupid, lazy, worthless. Had you ever had coaches who used that kind of language before? No, never, never. And I've played basketball for years before I came to USF and never had really anything like it. So here you have Maria and Marta in a new country at a new school, on a new team, with a coach that they say they don't know anymore.

Yeah, it was definitely overwhelming for them. And in our reporting, we've noticed a pattern in the stories we've heard. Often, athletes have said it took time to recognize issues with their coach's behavior. Many say that the turning point was watching a teammate face the same treatment that they had. And for Marta and Maria, it was like each was holding up a mirror to the other. Like it was, you know, double the effect because, you know, just to me at some points, like even seeing her go through some of these things felt a little bit, if it almost felt worse than me going through it. Well, what about their teammates?

Yeah, later on, during the twins' litigation against USF and Goodenbauer, their teammates were asked how the coaches spoke to them on the court. Here's one of those players, Lela Herrera, speaking in a deposition video. I've seen her call us useless, stupid, incompetent, when we can complete a drill at her level. I've seen my teammates crying. so just to name a few. How frequently would she say those types of things to your teammates? Every practice.

How many times per practice? Three or four. The man asking the questions here is the twins lawyer, Randy Gaw. Herrera, who is African American and Puerto Rican, also said that the assistant coach, Janelle Jones, made racially insensitive comments towards her. And so what does Goodenbauer say about all this? Well, Goodenbauer argued in legal filings that her comments to the twins were, quote, solely about their basketball performance and not personal.

She said in her trial testimony that she told players they were lazy and that she called them out when they quit in drills, but that she never called them names. And she said that she gave them positive feedback. For example, she sent Marta texts encouraging her and reminding her of her potential early in her freshman year. Coach Goodenbauer has declined our repeated requests for an interview, and assistant coach Jones has not responded. D1 sports can be intense and really high pressure. Do you think that contributed to the environment that the twins alleged existed? I mean, we don't really know what Goodenbauer's motivation was, but yes, it's true that this was a high pressure environment, and she might have been under specific pressures. NCAA coaches face extreme pressure to win, and like anybody else, their jobs are tied to their performance.

Goodenbauer's lawyer referred to Maria and Marta's freshman year as being, quote, very difficult and stressful for their coach. And just before Goodenbauer took over, USF was doing great. The team had made it to the first round in March Madness. But after becoming head coach, Goodenbauer's team struggled. In the first two seasons, they had only slightly more wins than losses. In the third season, which was Marta's and Marius' freshman year, the team's record was seven wins and 24 losses. Marta says it was really tough.

You're fighting, you're giving your best, you're literally collapsing on the ground, you're trying to stand up, you're trying to go through the drill, and at the same time you have someone hovering over your head saying you're a fucking idiot. It was miserable. The twins lawsuit cites a specific incident that they say crossed a line. During a practice in their freshman year, Marta says that she asked to use the restroom three times with increasing urgency during a drill. She said coach Goodenbauer told her no, and that an assistant coach also said, quote, not if Coach Goodenbauer said no. Marta told us the same story in an interview.

running to the point where not only I could not like seriously control my legs anymore like as I really needed to go use the restroom I could not control my bladder anymore and I just urinated on myself and my whole my jersey my pants everything was everything was visibly wet and I remember like in that state I was so I don't even have the words to describe like I felt so embarrassed so ashamed low And she says she went back to Goodenbauer a fourth time. I approached her at that half court. She was standing on the left side. I so vividly remember. And I'm like, Coach, I literally urinated on myself. I have to go to the bathroom. Her response?

No, you can go whenever you finish the drill. Marta says she completed the drill before going to the restroom and cleaning herself up. Okay. How did Goodenbauer respond to that allegation? In her testimony, Goodenbauer said that she wasn't aware of this incident when it happened. She stated that players are free to leave the court whenever they need to use the restroom. And she said she felt really badly that this would happen to one of her players. But after this incident, Marta says she would use the bathroom multiple times before practice,

worried about being humiliated again. She used this time to prepare herself. splashing cold water, doing the Superman pose, like anything you can to kind of prepare myself to face those next couple of hours. She says practices felt like entering a war zone. And then it was time for the players' performance reviews in March of their freshman year. The twins decided to secretly record their meetings with Coach Goodenbauer and assistant coach Janelle Jones using their cell phones. In these recordings, you can hear Goodenbauer threatening to take away their scholarships. In Maria's recording, Goodenbauer can be heard telling her repeatedly that she does not want to coach her,

that Maria is going to be miserable and that she will lose her scholarship if she messes up. Because it was secretly recorded, the tape quality here is poor. The next time you put on a drill, you're not going to have a scholarship anymore. Okay, I understand. And later on in that meeting, But when you're the person in the room that knows their teammates don't really want to be on their team in a drill or in a, I mean, gosh, how do you deal with that? You look at yourself and say, nobody wants me on their team. Goodenbauer continues.

You can go somewhere else now and have an opportunity to have a fresh start. that you have a lot of baggage right now, that it's going to be really difficult for you to overcome. I can honestly say, I don't want to coach you. They don't. I'm sure that was very hard to hear for Maria. What about Marta's meeting? Was it similar?

Yeah, Goodenbauer made similar statements to Marta. Marta says that she was really nervous going in. She remembers her palms sweating. I felt like confined in that room and, you know, them kind of attacking me was me kind of alone versus them. And at that time, I'm this, you know, foreigner freshman at the end of my year. I have no idea what's happening, what they can or cannot do. And suddenly they're, you know, threatening to take away my scholarship. Here's Goodenbauer in this meeting.

The next time you quit on something, I take your scholarship from you. And assistant coach Jones jumps in too. You're going to lose your scholarship, and then you will be back in Croatia because you're not going to do it. No one others, there's not that school's going to pick you up here in the United States because they're going to call us and they're going to say, why did you guys kick MARTA off the team? Because you don't have any stats. And we're going to say because she quits. I believe them. I mean, I thought it was all true.

I thought that's what she was able to do. And, you know, she was kind of the person. in control of my future? Well, I mean, I don't know much about sports, so I would think that, too. Like, it seems like coaches do have a lot of power. Sure, they do. But here's the thing. The NCAA does not allow a coach to take away a scholarship for poor performance or injury.

Marta says she didn't know that. By the end of her freshman year, Marta says that she wanted to graduate as soon as possible. She wanted to get out of this environment. And meanwhile, Maria told us that starting her freshman year, she was experiencing feelings she had never known before USF. She says she began to have racing anxious thoughts that got worse when she was around Goodenbauer. Suddenly, I started getting these panic attacks.

I'm having violent nightmares. I'm like, I'm so depressed. I've never thought I was that kind of person and nobody really prepares you for that. She said she started to wish that she would not wake up. I was like literally on the edge. I felt like there was like no point in continuing with life. Maria suffered two mental health crises, according to the legal complaint.

The first in the fall of her sophomore year, when she reported Goodenbauer's treatment of her to a USF trainer, who walked her over to the school's counseling and psychological. services for an evaluation. Maria received therapy there after that. Did getting therapy help her? Was she able to cope with the stress after she got the therapy? Maria says there was a brief period where it felt like she was gaining Gooden Bauer's approval,

but that didn't last long. And she had a second crisis in January of her junior year. At this point, she says she had begun to feel numb. Her father sent an email to an athletic trainer stating that Maria had told him she did not want to live anymore. The trainer immediately got in touch with Maria and helped her call the counseling center again. And Maria is saying that the reason for these crises was the way Goodenbauer was coaching her? It's never any one thing. But there was a psychiatrist who served as an expert witness for the twins in the trial.

She examined them and determined that they both. both suffered a, quote, psychiatric illness. And this psychiatrist wrote in her report for the trial, quote, Maria and Marta Ghalich's psychiatric illness was caused by Coach Gooden-Bowers' treatment on the USF women's basketball team. Okay, so let's zoom out for a minute. You've said emotional abuse in college sports is common. So are there procedures in place to protect students? Like, where do they turn to for help? Well, when a student athlete experiences emotional abuse, they might report to any number of institutions. Yeah, Ayesha, think of these places that a student might report to as concentric circles.

At the center, you have the team's coaching staff and other support staff, then the athletic department, then the university. Outside of all of that, you have a sports national governing body. This is something like USA basketball. Then you have the NCAA and Safe Sport, which is an organization that investigates allegations of abuse in sports. And finally, you have the legal system. We've also seen students report through channels designed for victims of sexual abuse and gender discrimination. For example, a campus Title IX office. And during their time at USF, Marian Marta knocked on many doors.

Yeah, they reported to university staff, an assistant coach, athletic, trainers, a school psychologist, and to athletic department leadership. So did their father. So how did the school respond? USF's head of NCAA compliance reached out to the twins to speak about their experiences on the team. Maria met with him and HR leader Diane Nelson. Maria told them that she was being bullied and that Goodenbauer and Jones had said that they would make her life miserable if she returned the following year.

And here we want to add that the NCAA does not have an emotional abuse policy to cover the over 500,000 student athletes who compete each year. A representative there said that schools are the ones primarily responsible for student athletes safety. The NCAA declined our multiple requests for an interview and referred us to their mental health best practices webpage. USF investigated Maria's claims. Nelson from HR led that investigation, but she didn't interview any student athletes on the team other than Maria. The only other two people she spoke with were Goodenbauer and Jones. Goodenbauer said in a deposition that in her meeting with Nelson, she was not made aware of any bullying allegations. Here's the

Twins attorney, Randy Gaw. Did Ms. Nelson ask you any questions about whether you had made any inappropriate comments to any of your players? No. She simply had me describe my practices. It's not clear whether Nelson asked Goodenbauer about the threat to take the twin scholarships. Goodenbauer testified that she was never asked about this. At the end of her investigation, Nelson concluded that Goodenbauer had not broken any USF policies. Nelson has not responded to our request for comment. USF wrote in a statement that the university acknowledges the, quote, seriousness of the issue,

but, quote, disputes the allegations. Here's the twins lawyer again, Randy Gaw, speaking in an oral argument from last August. Coach Jones admitted that the scholarship threat was made. And Ms. Nelson admitted under testimony that a threat to take away a scholarship would be improper. And yet she exonerates them and, like, writes the false statement that there was no evidence of the scholarship threat whatsoever. The investigation was so perfunctory and nothing happened. Okay, so the twins lawyer is saying the investigation was not very thorough. But again, the university is kind of policing itself, right?

Like, instead of bringing in someone independent to review the twins' allegations. Well, yes, but it's complicated. We spoke with a lawyer who's represented student athletes in two dozen similar cases. And he says, because of the inherent conflict of interest, the right way to do it is to hire someone outside of the university, an external independent investigator. But even in transparent, independent investigations, the university still sets the rules for what is within and outside the scope of an investigation. And universities want to avoid liability exposure.

But what about that independent nonprofit SafeSport, the organization specifically tasked with looking into abusive coaching? Yeah, so SafeSport was created by Congress in 2017. after Larry Nassar's abusive athletes was exposed. But SafeSport was primarily founded to prevent sexual abuse. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, it doesn't investigate emotional and physical misconduct allegations. Marta says she'd never even heard of SafeSport. So basically, there are many organizations who might investigate,

but it's a patchwork system with many holes. Often, even coaches who are pushed out. their programs just end up popping up somewhere else. That must be pretty frustrating or even painful to students who allege abuse. Yeah. And to that point, let's go back to Coach Goodenbauer. She had been accused of similar abusive behavior at previous programs, including at Chico State and UC Irvine.

At Irvine, Goodenbauer received a suspension and an email from the athletic department, noting that her, quote, insensitive and abusive. remarks towards players was a pattern. So with all of that on her record, how did she end up getting the head coach job at USF? That's a great question, Aisha. We know the hiring process was pretty expedited, just 11 days. And we know from a deposition of the school's athletic director that Goodenbauer was not asked about those accusations of verbal abuse because those questions had not been asked of other candidates. Chico State's athletic director did tell USF's athletic director that Goodenbauer was a good and stern coach. So despite some controversy, Goodenbauer is head coach at USF, and it seems

like the school has her back. So where does that leave Marta and Maria? Well, the last option is to file a lawsuit, and that's what the twins did. Maria Amarta's father is a lawyer in Croatia. and a mutual friend introduced him to another lawyer in San Francisco, Randy Gaw, who he heard from earlier. Gaw's firm does business litigation, but they take on some personal injury cases as well. He says he's been working on this one effectively pro bono for years. We do some kind of personal injury cases on the side,

and this was one of them because we felt like we can make a difference. So you said that Maria and Marta filed their case in 2021, What did they allege? They alleged that Goodenbauer was liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress, meaning that she had intended to hurt them or had acted with reckless disregard for their well-being, in short, that her actions had crossed a line. The lawsuit also alleged that Goodenbauer and USF were negligent, meaning the school and the coaching staff had a duty to care for them and failed to do so.

The power dynamic is also a critical component. of this contextual analysis. If a random person off the street said the things or did the things to Marta and Maria, there would be no case because that person has no relationship, no power over them, right? And we in society should have rules basically. You can't just sue for random conduct like that. Like it's not expected to have an impact on you. But Ms. Goodenbauer was a surrogate parent in many ways.

God told us that the legal system has some catching up to do when it comes to emotional abuse. He says there's resistance in the law to mental damages and that judges and jurors are skeptical of plaintiffs who claim they were emotionally damaged. So really, you're dealing with a resistance to that in a lot of jurors, or not a lot of jurors, but at least some jurors. who just don't think that a purely mental injury is like a real thing, or at least it's a thing that's not as harmful as a physical injury. So in some ways, he's saying it was an uphill battle. Exactly. Gaw never expected this case would go to trial.

Typically, cases like this are settled out of court. From Marta and Maria, this was also about justice. They said they went through all of this so that other athletes wouldn't have to experience what they did. The trial went on for 10 days, and on the 11th day, in July of 2023, the jury reached a verdict. What did it find? It found that Goodenbauer's behavior was outrageous towards Marta and that she had either intended to cause Marta harm or had acted with reckless disregard for March's well-being. But the jury found that these actions had failed to cause Marta severe emotional distress.

Okay, so they're saying that Goodenbauer crossed the line, but Marta ended up mostly okay. So what about Maria? Well, the jury sided with Maria, finding that Goodenbauer was liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and that Maria had suffered severe emotional distress. It also found that Goodenbauer and USF were grossly negligent. It awarded Maria $250,000 in compensated. compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages. What I do remember is when the jury verdict was read afterwards, her sobbing with joy, you know,

because she felt validated, that she told her story and a group of impartial people decided that, yes, what happened to you was wrong. You were not overly sensitive. And did the university accept the ruling, or did they appeal it? So they filed a motion asking a judge to override the jury's decision, and the judge actually did take away Maria's punitive damages award. But Maria appealed. And late last summer, a panel of appellate judges restored her award, giving her the full amount.

That same panel also granted a retrial for Marta's case, after Gaw argued that critical evidence, was tossed out, which would have impacted the jury's decision. This included allegations that Goodenbauer was emotionally abusive in previous programs. Marta was granted a retrial for her negligence claim, but actually reached a settlement with USF late last month. And what about Goodenbauer? Like, where is she today? Last year, USF renewed Goodenbauer's contract through the 28th season.

She's still coaching there today. A court shot brought to you by USF head coach Molly Goodenbauer. A university representative wrote to us in a statement that while the school respects the legal process, it does not agree with all of the outcomes. The representative wrote, quote, the university and our employees have acted in good faith and in accordance with their responsibilities. We continue to stand by the coaches and staff of the women's basketball program. Oh, okay. And what about Marta and Maria? What happened to them?

So even before they decided to sue, while they were still at USF, the twins' paths had already begun to diverge. Maria didn't play another game for USF after her second visit to the campus counseling center, her junior year. Meanwhile, Marta was still playing, and she was playing well. Maria graduated the next year from USF in 2022 with a degree in architecture. Today, she lives in New York City, where she recently got her MFA in interior design. But the last time we talked to her, she still sounded very much in pain. It's definitely something that still impacts me to this day in ways that I couldn't imagine. She was visibly shaking as she spoke to us on our video call, but said it was important for her to tell her story.

I want people to know that it's not just the time you spend there with the coach. She's just so many more years after that and your life changes completely. Maria says she can't pick up a basketball anymore. Marta stayed with the USF team, graduating in three years, summa cum laude with a degree in finance. After that, she transferred her eligibility to Tulane in Louisiana. She said it was hard to leave her sister behind. Well, tell me about Marta's experience at Tulane. At Tulane, Marta was elected captain of the basketball team, and she thrived under her new coach.

Lisa Stockton had coached there for 30 years, and her teams appeared in postseason tournaments 21 times. Stockton was inducted into the Conference USA Hall of Fame in 2023, and here's what she told us about her coaching philosophy. There's a difference between challenging someone and pushing them to be successful and being hard on them and being unfa. and being unfair. And I think you've got to know the difference in that. Stockton retired in 2024. She said that most coaches who are still working would likely be hesitant to speak with us.

I've been a player's coach, but I think right now it's a really tough time to be a coach. And I don't know if that matters in your story, but when you talk about our coaches worried about certain things, yeah, I mean, it's really hard to do this job where you're pushing people beyond what they think, you know, their limits, and you're trying to make them better. I get that. I mean, it does sound really hard. And now we're in a world where college athletes can be compensated for their play, where some have large social media followings, and where they can transfer to a new school pretty easily.

It's a power dynamic that's really changed that's difficult to function with the way it is now. Stockton says this can make it harder to build a positive team culture. But for Marta, Tulane was a great fit. It was night and day difference, really. Tulane really showed me what it means and what big of a difference it makes, to have great people around you, to have great leadership, to have people who care about you, who push you at the same time, to be better, to improve, to achieve your potential.

Marta told us that her sister watched all of her Tulane games and that for Maria, it was like seeing a version of herself out there on the court, still able to enjoy playing the game that had required so much personal sacrifice. Elizabeth and Julia, thank you so much for your reporting and shining a light on this subject that I didn't know much about and I think that a lot of people probably haven't really thought about. You're welcome, Aisha.

Yeah, thanks for having us. That was reporters Julia Haney and Elizabeth Santos. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Mambo. Jenny Schmidt edited this episode. Fact-checking by Katie Doggart. The engineer was Jimmy Keely. The Sunday Story team includes Justine Yan and Leanna Simstrom. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi.

A special thanks to the audio program and Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, as well as Shereen Marisaw Maragi, who runs the audio program at the school and provided production help with this story. Funding for this story was also supported

by the Carter Center's Mental Health Parity Collaborative and the Fund for Investigative Journalism. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week, until then, have a great rest of your week. weekend.