Former University of Wisconsin-Green Bay basketball player Ryan Bross has come forward with abuse allegations against head coach Brian Wardle. Boss, a 7’1 redshirt freshman walk-on, accuses Wardle of constantly using vulgar language toward him, using a homophonic slur to indicated he was soft, saying if he had sex with a girl he would play better, and forcing him to workout while ill and chastising him when he defecated on himself.
“Coach Wardle told me to stop being a (expletive) and to go into the woods,” Bross said. “So I went into the woods and took a crap. I came back and he was like, ‘Are you all done? Are you OK? Are you done being a (expletive) now, Ryan?’ because they thought I was faking it, but I wasn’t. So I kept running the hills. I finished one hill. I came back down, and I told them I was not feeling well again, and (Wardle) made me run another hill again because he told me that I was being a baby and that I was letting down the team and I was letting down myself, and that I was letting down everyone.”
Bross said it was at that point that he couldn’t control his diarrhea and soiled his pants.
“I got down to the bottom (of the hill), and Wardle told me I was a piece of (expletive) and that he had never seen such a big (expletive) in his life and that I was the biggest piece of (expletive) he had ever seen,” Bross said.
Wardle has denied the abuse allegations, but has said that Bross did soil himself during workouts acknowledging that it was viewable through his white shorts. Bross alleges that after the accident he had to walk through the athletic center in front of other students without cleaning himself. He called the experience humiliating and said the coach called him a piece of (expletive) for once a week for several months after the indecent.
Bross’ mother wrote in detail about the accusations in a letter to the school’s chancellor and two days later the coach was under investigation. Coach Wardle has received support through this. The father of the schools’ star player spoke in favor of him, and he also received a standing ovation from school boosters at a recent fundraiser.
Bross plans to transfer to Concordia University next school year and when asked why he has come forward with the accusations said:
“I just want for the guys coming in, the recruits and everyone else, to be treated fairly and for them to be in a situation that they will succeed and that won’t hinder their performance, and they won’t have someone who is downgrading and belittling them every day. I just want a place where it’s a good work-place environment for a student athlete. So I just want someplace where the students coming in and the guys here, so that they don’t get all the crap that happened to me.”
These are some pretty damning allegations. It seems like Brain Wardle and ex Rutgers coach Mike Rice come from the same school of coaching thought. If these allegations are true they are inexcusable and should not be tolerated. The job of a coach is to get the best out of his/her players on the court and the good ones do not have to berate and belittle them to do it.