Following years of complaints and misconduct, former Fort Lewis (Col.) College men’s basketball coach Bob Pietrack resigned in 2024 for “personal reasons,” but the Durango Herald obtained records from Fort Lewis College that reveal the true reasons for Pietrack’s sudden resignation, including comments from athletics department staff and several student-athletes promising to leave the school if Pietrack continued to work as the head basketball coach.
A letter from Pietrack’s former assistant coach, Daniel Steffensen, revealed that Pietrack was guilty of “academic misconduct, threatening and coercive behavior, and the frequent use of racial, homophobic and sexist slurs.”
His inappropriate language most often manifested in the use of the N-word, both in writing and in conversation. Several Fort Lewis College athletics department personnel reported Pietrack frequently referring to Black student-athletes as “Ninjas.” One former student-athlete said, “He used to call us African American players ‘ninjas’ all the time.” Pietrack allegedly used ‘Ninja’ as a way of “saying the N-word without saying it outright,” that player described to the Durango Herald.
Since Pietrack started coaching at the college in 2015, no student-athletes ever reported his misconduct.
However, Pietrack’s behavior extended beyond foul language. Professors on campus, including Joshua Coon, reported Pietrack would ask him to “do favors for players who struggled academically, including granting them extensions, more lenient grading and last-minute enrollments.”
The academic misconduct and poor relationship with faculty had degraded to the point that, in 2020, Fort Lewis College administrators requested that Pietrack not approach professors directly; however, Coon thought that solution was inadequate at the time.
Steffensen resigned as assistant coach following Pietrack’s issues with Coon, and said, “My biggest regret in all of this was not going to the AD earlier and self-reporting.”
Following his resignation from Fort Lewis College for ‘personal reasons,’ Pietrack accepted the head coaching position at Ferris State University. However, Pietrack also resigned from his position with Ferris State, citing personal reasons, at the end of September.
