The New York State Education Department and Attorney General’s Office are investigating allegations of a systemic culture of abuse by coaches toward student-athletes in the Saratoga Springs City School District.
As reported by The Daily Gazette of Schenectady, the investigation comes after a group called Safe Athletics For Everyone (SAFE) filed a wide-ranging legal complaint against the Saratoga Springs City School District arguing that the district didn’t properly address the allegations.
The complaint demands the firing of some school administrators and varsity coaches Art and Linda Kranick, Adrienne Dannehy and Katie Hannan (who is no longer a coach at the school), and was submitted to governor Kathy Hochul, state attorney general Letitia James, state Education Department commissioner Betty Rosa, Board of Regents chancellor Lester Young Jr., and Robert Zayas, the executive director of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association.
“The Department received the complaint and is investigating in conjunction with the Office of the Attorney General,” said JP O’Hare, a spokesperson for the state Education Department, in an email Friday, as reported by The Daily Gazette.
He did not provide further comment on how the investigation will be conducted.
The 77-page complaint was filed Oct. 2 by Martin J. Greenberg, the founder of Marquette University’s National Sports Law Institute, on behalf of a group.
The complaint includes a long list of mostly anonymous statements from former athletes and their parents detailing alleged bullying, harassment, manipulation and oppressive behavior by the coaches of Saratoga girls’ track and cross country teams, coached since the 1980s by the Kranicks; the girls’ soccer team (Dannehy); and the girls’ lacrosse team (Hannan).
Many of the statements were anonymous, as the complainants stated the feared retaliation, according to the document filed with the state.
The alleged coaching practices and behavior constituted physical, mental and verbal abuse that was intimidating, humiliating and, in many cases, physically dangerous, according to the complaint.
Statements against the Kranicks, whose girls’ cross country program is perennially one of the best in the country, came from seven anonymous former athletes who graduated from 1988 to 1999 and also included three letters from anonymous parents of runners who graduated from 2018 to 2022, The Daily Gazette reported.
One former runner coached by the Kranicks who chose to supply her name was Kristen (Gecewicz) Gunning, a multiple state meet competitor as a sprinter on the track team from 1985-89. She provided a lengthy account of what she saw as “a toxic culture of control and abuse of middle and high school girls all in the name of winning.”
Gunning’s accusations include the maintenance of an almost cult-like environment in which athletes, primarily distance runners, are forced to overtrain, sometimes to the point of injury and permanent physical and emotional damage, and face severe restrictions on diet and social interaction outside the core of the team.
“Your whole identity becomes being a runner for the Kranicks. There is nothing else in your life,” Gunning wrote. “They systematically remove everything else until it’s only them left.”
Gunning also accuses the school administration of turning a blind eye to the alleged abuse or even encouraging it, since the program has been so successful on a state and national level for decades.
During a school board meeting Thursday night Gunning’s mother, Mary Gecewicz, accused the district of seeing the abuse and rather than stopping it, applauding the coaches for winning. She alleged that when her daughter was an athlete, she was tied to the coaches’ truck and made to run faster as the vehicle increased speed.
Contacted Friday by The Daily Gazette, track and cross country coach Linda Kranick said she “absolutely did not” want to provide any comments
Anne Marie Pendergast, the mother of former Saratoga soccer players and a named party in the complaint, also spoke at the board meeting.
“School sports are supposed to be a component of education, so why don’t we hold coaches to the same standards of behavior as we do teachers?” she said. “Imagine a classroom where a teacher regularly refers to students as weak or stupid or lazy or just not good enough. That happened on the playing field.”
Pendergast said she wrote letters to the school administration in 2015 and school board in 2016 complaining about Dannehy.
“Injured players were looked down upon, disregarded or disbelieved by the coaches creating an atmosphere where these young girls were hesitant or even afraid to be honest about their pain,” the complaint states.
In Hannan’s case, the SAFE statement includes a letter that parents representing 16 of the 22 players on the 2022 girls’ lacrosse team had sent to Saratoga school superintendent Michael Patton and athletic director Nick McPartland. Patton is still at the helm of the district while McPartland left this past year to take a job in another district.
Hannan is also accused of body-shaming students, with one anonymous player, who graduated in 2022, writing earlier this year that a teammate told her Hannan had called her a whore.
Hannan did not immediately return a request for comment.
Dannehy also did not immediately return a request for comment.
New York State Public High School Athletic Association Executive Director Robert Zayas said this is a school district matter.
“We are not an investigative body for personnel matters,” he said. “This is something that is a school district matter and we just made sure that the school district is aware that we received it and then the school district would then need to go ahead and take any action they see appropriate.”
The district said Friday in an email it has not been made aware of an investigation by the state Education Department or Attorney General’s Office, but that allegations it “ignored or did not address the complaints referenced in this letter are completely false.”
The district said it takes such allegations very seriously.
“The district has received numerous communications in support of the Blue Streaks athletic program, and we are dedicated to providing a safe and positive environment for all students,” the district said. “We encourage our students, parents, and community members to reach out to school officials with any concerns that they may have.”
Resident T.H. Reynolds, who spoke at the board meeting, said he was at a meeting a year ago asking the board similar questions about how they would handle allegations of abuse. “Participation in high school athletics should be an activity that improves their wellbeing, not destroy it,” he said. “What is it going to take for someone in this district, someone in a position of power, to stand up and lead an effort to change the culture of our athletics program?”
