Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, who played for the Houston Comets and trained at both Texas Southern and Prairie View A&M, had a coaching career full of abusive and abusive behavior towards her players, according to The Athletic’s Chantelle Jennings and Danna Omslaw.
Cooper-Dyke has been TSU’s coach for the past three seasons before announcing his retirement in March. TSU sent out a glowing press release about the coach’s influence on the event, but The Athletic said Cooper-Dyke was investigating the title IX, which had no contact between the coach and her players except for practice and sports. . The IX probe was dropped after Cooper-Dyke, 59, retired.
Athletic spoke to players and family members at TSU – as well as players at Cooper-Dyke’s other coaching stops: Prairie View A&M, USC and North Carolina-Wilmington – who elaborated on the pattern of vulgar and abusive language when dealing with athletes.
According to The Athletic, when Cooper-Dyke was told that a player with a known mental-health diagnosis was depressed, she said, “She’ll be fine, she just needs some D —.” She repeatedly commented – sometimes in front of the school’s men’s team players – in a graphic way about her player’s sex life. Another TSU player says Cooper-Dyke talked so much about her weight that she stopped eating in front of her coach.
The athletic story is similar to Cooper-Dyke’s other coaching stops, in which several players said they committed suicide while playing for a coach, and one USC player said, “I was confused and not a day went by that I didn’t think about. My life took a turn for the worse, and Cynthia came up with the idea of doing it at home so that she would know how devastating it was for me. ”
As a player, Cooper was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame after winning four WNBA Championships with the Houston Comets and being named the final MVP each season. She coached WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury before joining college coaching with Prairie View A&M in 2005. She led the Panthers to their first NCAA Tournament, but the event was also put on probation by the NCAA for a breach with Cooper-Dyke. Giving her players gifts and cash. Athletic could only speak to a Prairie View player during Cooper-Dyke’s tenure, and he spoke brilliantly about the player coach.
Cooper-Dyke’s next stop was two years at UNC-Wilmington, where athletes told The Athletic about her abusive behavior before she left for her first term at TSU. She was at TSU for just one season before her job at Alma Mater USC. After four seasons there, the USC investigated Cooper-Dyke’s alleged abusive behavior and was ready to fire the coach, but she resigned instead. Two years later, she returned to TSU, where the players alleged that her abusive behavior continued.
In a statement to The Athletic, Cooper-Dyke said: “Throughout my years as a coach, I have had numerous interactions with athletes in my role as their coach, mentor and friend. I had a positive relationship with the majority of the players and staff and my sole purpose was to enhance the potential of the players and help them to excel. While these allegations are untrue, everyone deserves to work, play and learn in a respectful environment, and I sincerely apologize and regret the words used during an enthusiastic game or practice that hurt or hurt someone.
