Huffman Doesn’t Want Battle to Become Personal : Women’s athletics: Titan volleyball coach says he took school to court because he felt dropping the program was wrong. Issue has polarized the athletic department.

FULLERTON —  To women’s sports advocates, Cal State Fullerton volleyball Coach Jim Huffman is a champion, a guy who took on the big, bad bureaucracy and to this point has won.

To his players, he is a dedicated leader who put his job--and perhaps his career--on the line to wage a court battle to save their team, their scholarships and preserve their opportunity to compete in athletics.

To school President Milton A. Gordon, he is, in Huffman’s words, “the worst nightmare we ever had.”

When Fullerton announced Jan. 28 that it was dropping volleyball, and Huffman filed a lawsuit claiming the school violated sex-discrimination laws, he expressed hope that a legal battle wouldn’t deteriorate into a personal war between him and the school.

But throughout a process that continued with Friday’s Superior Court issuance of a preliminary injunction to block the school’s move, Huffman has spent much of the time defending himself.

“When (President Gordon) was giving his deposition, he gave me looks that would kill, like it’s all my fault this happened,” Huffman, 33, said. “You’ve got to be kidding me. My kids get thrown to the wolves, I get canned, they’re breaking the law, and it’s all my fault?”

Particularly stinging were comments by Maryalyce Jeremiah, the Fullerton women’s basketball coach and first-year associate athletic director who three years ago waged her own in-house fight to further gender equity in the athletic department.

“Certainly, CSUF cannot pay the salary necessary to attract the caliber of coach required to make the team competitive,” Jeremiah said in a sworn declaration.

And this from Titan Athletic Director Bill Shumard’s declaration: “I do not consider the women’s volleyball program currently either competitive or viable.”

In volleyball parlance, Huffman was getting spiked.

“When Bill and Maryalyce said those things, it was big-time hurt,” said Huffman, whose teams had a 25-80 record in his three years as coach. “I feel like I’ve been a Titan, a team player, since I’ve been here, but when I stand up for what I believe in, they rip me.”

It’s not just Huffman vs. the administration, though. This battle has gone well beyond the courtroom, permeating the halls of Titan Gym and polarizing the athletic department.

“Walking through the athletic department, there’s so much tension it’s incredible,” said Stephanie Scofield, a senior volleyball player who completed her career last fall. “People aren’t as talkative, they’re staying to themselves, it’s not as open as it used to be.

“There are two sides: Jim’s side and the athletic department’s side. People have to choose sides, and I don’t like that at all.”

Huffman said one Titan women’s coach told him he was worried about “getting chewed out” by an administrator for talking to him.

“On one hand, I feel bad that my colleagues have to take heat for being on good terms with me,” Huffman said. “On the other hand, it infuriates me that they have to take heat.”

Huffman had a chance to jump into the Title IX fire three years ago when Jeremiah was making her push for gender equity in the department. According to Huffman, Jeremiah drafted a letter to send to then-school President Jewel Plummer Cobb, threatening her with a Title IX lawsuit.

Huffman, at the time in the first year of his first Division I head coaching job, declined to sign it.

“Even then, I didn’t know Title IX was a law--I had always heard of it as a guideline,” Huffman said. “The thing I did know was athletic directors would burn you at the stake if you waved the banner for Title IX. When Ed Carroll (then the athletic director) threatened me, I thought I’d better not sign it.”

Huffman said he collected Title IX literature over the past three years and became educated on the law well before the school made its Jan. 28 announcement. When Huffman’s team and job were eliminated, it was easy to lace up those gloves and jump into the ring--he had nothing to lose.

Opponents have claimed Huffman went to court to save his job, not to fight for gender equity, but Huffman denies that.

“My first priority was to get the team reinstated, find the girls a place to play and keep the program for incoming girls,” Huffman said. “I want to show that the school can’t do this to any women’s teams.”

Huffman is winning the legal battle on that level, but he has no control over what the school does to him. The preliminary injunction orders the school to provide “appropriate coaching” for the volleyball team but doesn’t specify that it must be Huffman.

Huffman holds little hope that the school will retain him, and he’s worried about how the whole case will affect his coaching career.

“Everyone tells me it will affect me negatively,” Huffman said. “They think it’s great what I’m doing, but that other athletic directors might be afraid to hire me. ADs have blackballed coaches for doing things like this.”

Kathryn Reith, communications director for the New York-based Women’s Sports Foundation and a Title IX expert, said she didn’t know what the case would do to Huffman’s career.

“Any athletic director who may be reluctant to comply with Title IX may be reluctant to hire him,” Reith said. “On the other hand, the fact that he’s willing to file suit to save his team shows he’s very dedicated, and that’s very important for a coach.”

Huffman will fall back on his firm belief in karma.

“What goes around comes around,” he said. “I feel strongly that I’m doing the right thing. Whatever happens, something good will come out of it.”

Huffman, who grew up in Independence, Mo., thought something great would come out of his decision to come to Fullerton in 1989.

An NAIA All-American volleyball player at Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, Huffman had spent three seasons (1982-84) as head coach at tiny Rockhurst College in Kansas City, one (1985) as an assistant at Iowa State and three (1986-88) as an assistant at Colorado State.

He had plenty of fund-raising experience at Colorado State and had experience working for a Fort Collins, Colo., sports promotions company before taking that job, both strong qualities to have if you’re a Fullerton coach.

“When this job opened up, it was like the description was written for me,” Huffman said. “I was in Southern California, in the best conference in the country. I was in heaven.

“Of course, heaven ain’t what it looks like anymore.”