One of the greatest aspects of competitive sports are the coaches. They can be immortalized as inspirational visionaries- your Joe Paternos – or larger-than-life, eccentric drill sergeants – your Bobby Knights. While we generally appreciate the former more, the examining the latter can be a little more fun.

Such is the case the Collegian‘s examination of women’s tennis coach Dawna Prevette – who, according to player allegations, is just a big bag of crazy.

About to bite into a slice of pepperoni pizza, sophomore Denisa Zobeideh removed the pepperoni. That’s all it took for Dawna Prevette, head coach of the Penn State women’s tennis team, to suspend her for the next tournament, Zobeideh’s father said.

Well, maybe that’s just a situation that was taken out of context. Surely a coach couldn’t be that arbitrary in punishing players…

[Former tennis team member Lauren] Holzberg said she was kicked off the team “because of a lack of eye contact.”

Okay…that may be somewhat extreme, but I’ll admit, good eye contact is always a desired quality in young professionals. Maybe she’s just strict.

[Mother of  tennis recruit Lynley Wasson] said Prevette had the team keep a food diary, so Lynley’s parents would sneak food to her and have her eat it in a restroom.

Is this a tennis coach, or Ben Stiller’s character from Heavyweights?

All joking about her cartoonishly hard-ass nature aside, the team has a .288 winning percentage with Prevette as the head coach. Looking at these claims from players (and the obvious damage to the player-coach relationship resulting from them being made public), combined with the poor performance, one has to wonder how she still has a job.

The most logical argument seems to be that Prevette is still only a second year coach and that everyone is still adjusting to her methods. But really, if these accusations are true, can the University continue to justify her employment despite such poor results?

The Collegian has an in depth examination of the coach’s relationship with her players (spoiler – by this account, it’s not very healthy) that is too intensive to review here. But if you’ve ever been berated by a coach, it’s a must-read.

[Source: The Daily Collegian]