Green Embittered Over His Retirement : CLU track: Longtime coach files age-discrimination claim, calls for ouster of athletic director.

When Don Green finally decided to hang up his stopwatch and clipboard after nearly a half-century of coaching track, many reasoned that Cal Lutheran would name its track after him and usher him into retirement with a memorable farewell dinner.

Green’s retirement arrived this spring, but there was hardly cause for celebration. Instead, the 71-year-old coach left Cal Lutheran amid charges that the school mistreated him, prompting cries of outrage from numerous Green proteges in the coaching ranks throughout Southern California.

Green said he feels humiliated as he enters retirement, belittled by an athletic department that he claims has pushed for his ouster since 1989. Green said he has been harassed, kicked out of his office and stripped of respect. The final indignity came last month when the school announced Green’s retirement without his consent.

Green charges that Athletic Director Bob Doering forced him to retire and in turn has called for Doering’s ouster.

Less than a month after overseeing his final race as a Cal Lutheran coach, Green has taken his complaints to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing. He met with a case worker Wednesday, laying the groundwork for an age-discrimination claim against the university for which he has served as men’s track and cross-country coach since 1970. During that 21-year span, he also served as an assistant football coach for nine years and the school’s athletic director for five during the 1970s.

In addition, the school faces another discrimination claim, this one being pursued by Hector Nieves, the women’s track and cross-country coach for the past five years. Nieves claims the school violated its own procedures when it failed to open the men’s track position, and he too has sought redress through the state Fair Employment department. The agency is expected to decide next week whether to file complaints on behalf of Green and Nieves.

Cal Lutheran has filled Green’s jobs with two people, this week appointing Matt Griffin, a rookie coach who ran on the cross-country team last fall as a senior, as the new cross-country coach. Earlier, the school appointed assistant football coach Kyle Tarpenning, 31, as track coach, a move that sparked further controversy when Green and Nieves both said that Tarpenning told them privately that he did not want the track job.

When asked this week about the job, Tarpenning said, “It’s not a position I pursued and not a position that is a career objective for me, but I have accepted the responsibilities assigned to me.”

Nieves, a walk-on coach who earned his teaching credential at Cal Lutheran in 1988 and teaches at Community High in Moorpark, informed school officials in writing of his displeasure and asked for a clarification of school policies and a meeting with school officials and Tarpenning. The school has refused his request for a meeting with Tarpenning and has withheld Nieves’ contract to coach the women’s team for next school year.

“I feel I’ve been treated unfairly and Cal Lutheran has been uncooperative with me,” he said. “I would like to continue to coach but not with this feeling of pressure. Since I wrote that letter, they have stated some guidelines to me, and one is not giving them a headache. I feel I’ve had very good success and I’m wondering why I even have to go through (this) ordeal.”

Doering, the school’s athletic director since 1980, refused to discuss details of Green’s departure, saying only that the school has set 70 as a mandatory retirement age for all employees. Green retired as a teacher last year at 70 and worked as cross-country and track coach for the just completed school year. Green was allowed to work one year after the mandatory retirement age as a favor from the school, Doering said.

“Because he had trouble retiring, we carried him an extra year,” Doering said. “Some people just don’t want to face mandatory retirement. You give a guy a break once and this is what you get.”

Calls to Cal Lutheran President Jerry Miller were referred to Dennis Gillette, vice president of institutional advancement, who was more charitable toward Green. Gillette’s daughters, Kristine and Lisa, ran at Thousand Oaks High for Artie Green, Don’s son and a successful coach for 14 years with the Lancers. Gillette characterized Artie as an inspiration to his daughters and lauded Don for his contribution to Cal Lutheran.

“Don Green has served this institution admirably for a protracted period of time and served as an excellent role model,” he said. “This is not personal. Cal Lutheran as an institution feels bad that a longtime employee of the school is dissatisfied. The school has done what it feels is best for the institution and Don disagrees.”

Gillette emphasized that job performance had nothing to do with Green’s severance from the school, saying that the school’s retirement policy dictated his departure.

Although state law forbids businesses from instituting mandatory retirement requirements, colleges and universities are permitted to set 70 as a retirement age for tenured faculty. However, schools must grant faculty members the right to seek extensions on a year-to-year basis and cannot refuse employment based on age.

“Doering has been telling me I’m too old since 1989,” Green said.

Green’s departure has sparked heated response from his legion of followers. He estimates that 80 of his former athletes work or have worked as coaches. One of those is Steve Blum, the Buena High girls’ track and girls’ cross-country coach and a 1977 Cal Lutheran graduate.

“Coach Green has done too much for that school to toss him away like an old towel,” Blum said. “He touched so many lives in such a positive way. I could not have been a successful coach without his help and advice.”

Five years ago, it seemed unthinkable that controversy would hound the Cal Lutheran track program. In 1986, Green hired his son Doni as an assistant and the transfer of power seemed secure.

Don Green had inherited a program in 1970 that had never won a dual meet. After the Kingsmen lost in his debut, they embarked on a 98-meet winning streak that spanned 15 seasons. In 21 years, he coached 44 All-Americans and narrowly missed No. 45 this year when Darren Bernard placed seventh in the 400 meters in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics championships last month at Tarleton State in Texas. The top six finishers are named All-American.

In eight seasons, Doni posted a 62-1 record as the Simi Valley High coach. He then assisted his father for four seasons but left last summer to coach the Moorpark College men’s and women’s track teams. The new job represented a substantial pay increase, but he said that was only one motive for leaving Cal Lutheran.

The track program had suffered since the university chose in 1988 to move from the NAIA to Division III of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Division III schools cannot offer athletic scholarships. The move has been criticized by current Cal Lutheran coaches and numerous alumni.

“The Cal Lutheran program was going nowhere because of (the move to) Division III,” Doni Green said. “When I considered Moorpark, I talked to my dad because I knew my leaving would put a load on him. But my dad said I should go to Moorpark because he didn’t think Doering would hire me because of his feelings toward my father.

“I think Doering has resented my father ever since he’s been there because people look to my dad for advice and counsel and they don’t look to Doering.”

Doering refused to comment on that claim or respond to criticism from numerous alumni who disparage his abilities as athletic director.

Don Green identified Doering as the prime target behind his decision to pursue an age-discrimination claim. Green is neither seeking money nor is he interested in reclaiming his coaching positions. Instead, he said, his claim represents a pursuit of justice.

“I want Bob Doering fired,” he said. “I want this place straightened out and I want it fair. I don’t see how coaches can get any fairness around here the way things are.”

Ironically, Green said he had decided that the 1990-91 school year would be his last as a coach before the school announced his retirement, citing the inability to give scholarships because of the move to Division III and what he called Doering’s general mismanagement of the department.

Green claims that the number of physical education majors has dropped dramatically since Doering joined the university in 1980. In a 1989 letter to Miller, the school president, in which Green accused Doering of harassing him in an effort to get him to resign, Green noted that the department had 118 physical education majors in 1980 and only eight in 1989.

Doering refused to release details on the number of majors but insisted that “the numbers have held solid for years.”

Green was angered when Doering took his office from him in December, but the breaking point came last spring when Doering demanded that the coach retire in what Green characterized as bizarre fashion. According to Green, Doering approached him with a retirement letter he wanted Green to sign but insisted upon leaving the physical education building and discussing the matter in an outdoor area adjacent to the campus.

“It was ridiculous, the damn most awful thing that can happen to a man,” Green said. “I thought, ‘Who the heck does he think he is?’ That’s when I decided to fight this.”

However, Green said that before he embarked on that course, he appealed to James Halseth, the university’s academic dean, offering to continue as track and cross-country coach for free. Green was paid $5,000 for his coaching duties in 1990-91.

Halseth has declined comment.

Green joins a vocal group that targets Doering in particular and the school’s athletic department in general for criticism. Many former Cal Lutheran athletes criticized the school’s decision to abandon the NAIA and join the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, an NCAA Division III conference, claiming the move de-emphasized athletics. The move had the support of the faculty and the school’s board of trustees.

But that criticism paled in comparison to the outrage that accompanied the school’s handling of the dismissal of Bob Shoup, the longtime football coach who was fired in 1989 in what many call a shabby manner.

Shoup, who many said saved the university from bankruptcy when his football team won a national championship in 1971, first learned of Cal Lutheran’s decision to fire him from a reporter in August, 1989. Later, it was revealed that Miller had announced the school’s plans to fire Shoup at an SCIAC meeting three months before the school informed Shoup.

After bitter negotiations in which Shoup said he was promised a lifetime contract by the school, Cal Lutheran officially announced that Shoup was fired in December, 1989, while he was out of town visiting an ailing friend.

Gillette conceded that the school erred in its handling of Shoup’s dismissal and ascribed some of the criticism involving Green’s departure to lingering resentment toward the school’s decision to join the SCIAC.

“Even at senior administration levels, if we had the opportunity to do it again, perhaps we’d do it differently,” he said. “Hindsight is always the clearest view. I understand people have strong feelings when the institution is making decisions contrary to people who have long associations with the school.”

Bill Swiontkowski, a 1967 Cal Lutheran graduate and former member of the school’s alumni board for six years, has trouble forgiving the school for its handling of Shoup’s ouster and is critical of Doering’s performance.

“I was so disgusted by the way Shoup was treated, I canceled my season tickets,” he said. “And with Don (Green), they’re not handling that right either. I’ve never heard anyone say anything positive about Doering. I’ve heard these things from student athletes, alumni, even administrators, about how the AD operates.”

Many critics find fault with the so-called people skills of the school’s administrators, saying that the university has bungled the Shoup and Green cases.

“There are bad things going on at Cal Lutheran,” said Blum, the Buena coach. “They have a terrible athletic director who doesn’t care about people.”

Blum ran track for Don Green at Cal Lutheran and has ties with him that reach back to the late ‘60s at Pomona High. During a 20-year stay at Pomona, Green oversaw a 117-meet win streak and coached pole vaulter Bob Seagren, gold medalist in the 1968 Olympic Games. Blum joins a group of Green proteges who praise Green’s abilities as coach and leader of young men.

Todd Leavens, who led Westlake High to the Marmonte League track championship with a 6-0-1 record in his rookie season as coach this spring, typifies reaction to Green. The 1987 Cal Lutheran graduate was an All-American in the 110 high hurdles and a member of the NAIA All-American 4 x 100 relay team.

“Papa Green was the best coach I ever worked with in my life,” Leavens said. “He never beat around the bush. Papa Green was always there if you needed him, even if you had a problem at home. He was like a father.”

Doug Rihn, the football coach at Montebello High, is a 1976 graduate who attended Cal Lutheran on a football scholarship but nearly left after a disappointing freshman season. He credits Green with saving his career at Cal Lutheran. Green talked him into trying out for the track team and he finished his career at Cal Lutheran as an All-American football player and javelin thrower.

“I may not have finished at Cal Lutheran if it wasn’t for him,” he said. “He was part of the experience that Cal Lutheran offered. A lot of camaraderie. You felt really welcome.”

Don Green figures he might spend his retirement lamenting the state of athletics at Cal Lutheran. But first, he is trying to deal with the acrimony that accompanied his last days at the school.

“Gosh, I had so much experience and met so many people,” he said. “This is a crushing blow and I feel humiliated. I think this is going to ruin the whole thing.”