Southern Methodist University women’s basketball coach Travis Mays is in hot water after eight players cited an abusive culture instilled by the four year-head coach, whom the players allege told them to kill themselves if they weren’t going to compete during a practice in the 2017-18 season, according to the Dallas Morning News.
The report also said that Mays, who started his first head coaching gig with SMU in 2016, was “needlessly cutting players from the roster, threatening to speak negatively to future employers and taking issue with a player not running due to injury.”
While there were different recollections of Mays’ exact wording when he said his players should kill themselves, SMU athletic director Rick Hart confirmed to the Morning News that these conversations did take place.
A blog post published in late January by former player Klara Bradshaw offered her first-hand account.
“If y’all don’t want to get it together, if y’all don’t get together and get connected, you might as well go and commit suicide,” Bradshaw wrote of Mays’ message to his players following a practice that he wasn’t happy with.
Bradshaw, who was a senior at the time, recalled how she immediately burst into tears because it had been just two years since her father had committed suicide.
The team and coaching staff apparently were aware of her father’s suicide.
Mays reportedly asked Bradshaw, in front of the entire team, why she started crying before a team trainer took her away from the gathering so she could collect herself.
The Morning News reported that Mays later apologized to Bradshaw via text message.
“Excuse the poor judgment of words,” he wrote, according to the Morning News. “Sorry to upset you. That wasn’t my intention.”
Another former player, McKenzie Adams, spoke out in solidarity with Bradshaw after the blog post was published. On Twitter, Adams described her senior season at SMU to be “one of the most mentally traumatic experiences ever.”
A spokesperson representing Mays declined to comment to the Morning News, however, he did address the incident after SMU’s most recent home game.
“It’s one of those things where sometimes you can push,” Mays said as part of the statement. “And it’s our job to push people outside of their comfort zones. And sometimes you can say things, whether it’s using the wrong verbiage or at the wrong time when you don’t need to express some of that.”
Hart, who has been SMU’s AD since 2012, admitted that several players met with him to report Mays’ behavior during the 2017-18 season, per the Morning News.
“Any time we get feedback, we follow up on it, we discuss it, we share it,” Hart told the Morning News. “We try to figure out what’s going on, what we need to do differently — whether it’s communication or process or structural.”