Benched basketball player denied injunction against coach for ‘slight, speculative’ harms

IL file photo

A federal judge has denied a benched girls basketball player’s request for a preliminary injunction against her coach and school district, determining the teen’s alleged harms are “slight, speculative, and economic.”

Chief Judge Holly Brady of the Indiana Northern District Court also wrote that the requested injunction is “indefinite, unworkable, and unnecessary.”

“Sayre’s law, named after twentieth century political scientist and Columbia University professor Wallace Stanley Sayre, posits that: ‘In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake,’” Brady wrote. “… The best-known invocation of Sayre’s law is generally credited to Henry Kissinger, who was said to have quipped: ‘Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.’

“If only Kissinger had lived to see the modern state of youth sports,” the chief judge wrote.

The Title IX complaint — BT v. Smith-Green Community School Corporation, et al., 1:23-cv-325 — was first filed in Whitley Superior Court in June and removed to federal court in late July.

The student, B.T., was a sophomore on the Churubusco High School basketball team during the 2022-23 school year.

According to the order, problems started when B.T. touched the team’s head coach, David Goodwell, on the hip or side of his buttocks at a practice. Goodwell found the incident inappropriate and reported it to the school’s athletic director, Nathan Wright.

The three of them met the next day, and B.T. apologized. As punishment, B.T. didn’t start that night’s game but still played.

Following the game, B.T.’s mother, D.T., texted other team parents to complain about the team’s record and said she was “so done with this manic, irrational coaching.”

D.T. sent an email the next day to Wright and the school’s principal, Terrence Roe. The plaintiff characterized the email as “regarding multiple instances of sexually inappropriate and/or sexual harassment like-behavior with women student-athletes by Goodwell and by a female assistant.”

In the order, Brady said she reviewed the email and couldn’t agree with that description.

During a meeting to discuss the email, B.T. showed Wright and Roe a video that she described as a “sex act” with Goodwell.

“B.T.’s characterization is an embellishment at best and a lie at worst,” Brady wrote. “What the video showed was Goodwell doing a pushup while a player sat on his back. Wright would later be given a photo of B.T. doing exactly the same thing.”

The last game B.T. played was Jan. 12.

Goodwell benched B.T. for the rest of the season and claimed he did so because B.T. “engaged in conduct that was detrimental to the team,” including spreading rumors about his future as a coach.

Goodwell also cited an incident during a game in which B.T. took off her shoes on the bench and cheered for the other team.

For her part, B.T. claimed the benching was related to her asking Goodwell why she wasn’t playing, to which the coach responded it was because she “got him in trouble.”

D.T. later sent a text message to players, parents and coaches calling Goodwell a “spin[e]less POS” — piece of s—.

After the season ended, B.T. wasn’t given the award for having the most assists on the team — she averaged 2.5 — and she was removed from the team’s group chat.

B.T. was also excluded from summer team activities, her jersey number was given to another player and her name was omitted from the team T-shirt.

Some of those issues have been resolved, Brady wrote.

“Sadly,” she continued, “the t-shirt remains unchanged.”

After she filed suit, B.T. sought an injunction prohibiting the defendants from retaliating against her, declaring that she is a member of the team and allowing her to participate in basketball games.

In denying the injunction request, Brady ruled B.T. did not establish a likelihood of success on the merits.

Based on the record, Brady wrote, it isn’t clear that B.T. or D.T. had a good-faith belief that B.T. was complaining of activity prohibited by Title IX.

Among the reasons for that conclusion, Brady wrote, was the “almost nonsensical ways” B.T. characterized the facts in her briefing, including the email that referenced “multiple instances” of sexually inappropriate behavior or sexual misconduct.

Even more egregious than that, Brady wrote, is B.T.’s description of the video that shows Goodwell doing a pushup while a player sat on his back, which B.T. described as “a player simulating a sex act.”

“If B.T. is willing to mischaracterize facts under oath, if not outright make them up, and present them to a federal court in pursuit of a preliminary injunction, the Court has little trouble concluding that she acted in less-than-good-faith when making similar, spurious claims to CHS administrators,” Brady wrote.

Brady also ruled the balancing of harms doesn’t weigh in B.T.’s favor, in part because the court is not “overwhelmed by the harms identified by B.T.”

“Contrary to B.T.’s arguments,” the chief judge wrote, “she has identified no case in which the opportunity to play high school sports was found to be the kind of irreparable harm that will support the entry of a preliminary injunction.”

Lastly, Brady ruled the public interest doesn’t support an injunction.

“Stated simply, the Court does not believe that the public interest is served by having the Court expend its limited judicial resources selecting the starting five for the CHS’ girls’ basketball team,” she wrote. “And the Court has no interest in setting a precedent that it will involve itself in youth sports playing time disputes on a record as thin as this one.”

B.T. has filed a notice that the parties have selected a mediator.