Former Harvard women’s ice hockey coach Katey Stone sued the university for sex discrimination on Tuesday, alleging Harvard forced her to resign after reports of misconduct she said were false and that the university undervalues and underpays female coaches.

Stone, who retired in June 2023, announced the lawsuit in a news conference Tuesday afternoon alongside her legal team and former Harvard hockey players.

Stone coached at Harvard for 27 seasons but left her post amid an investigation into allegations of mistreatment of players, including insensitivity to mental health issues, downplaying injuries, leading derogatory chants directed at players and creating a climate where players were pitted against each other to curry favor with her. Multiple articles, including a March 2023 report in The Athletic, also reported hazing within her program. The Athletic detailed hazing and initiation rituals that involved forced alcohol consumption and sexualized skits and traditions, including an annual event that dates back decades called “naked skate.”

The lawsuit alleges that Harvard forced Stone out because of these misconduct allegations, which she called false, and described the school’s actions as “part and parcel of a larger culture at the University wherein female coaches are undervalued, underpaid, heavily scrutinized, and held to a breathtakingly more stringent standard of behavior than their male counterparts.”

“These days, when coaches, more specifically female coaches, challenge athletes to bring out their best, they are taking a significant risk,” Stone said in prepared remarks on Tuesday. “The mental health crisis for young adults is real. Coaches are always searching to find the balance between pushing too hard versus affirming mediocrity, while cultural norms make it more difficult to set a high bar.”

Stone said that “female coaches are viewed by too many athletes, parents and administrators as being harmful, even emotionally abusive. The coaching profession is losing excellent coaches at an alarming rate as the scrutiny grows more intense and biased compared to our male counterparts.”

When reached for comment, a Harvard spokesperson said the school does not comment on active litigation.

Neither Stone nor her attorney, Andrew T. Miltenberg of Nesenoff & Miltenberg LLP, directly addressed specific allegations against Stone included in The Athletic’s story, save for a racially insensitive phrase she used in the locker room in March 2022, when she said “there are too many chiefs … not enough indians.” Miltenberg characterized it as a “common phrase” that “many of us have used.”

Miltenberg said the incident “became the catalyst, the pretext, for Harvard to start its campaign to undermine and ultimately force the resignation of Katey Stone.” He said it was a campaign “that started when Coach Stone raised the fact that she was undervalued and underpaid.”

The lawsuit states that in or around 2017, Stone and other female coaches at Harvard “began to fiercely advocate for pay transparency and parity between male and female coaches at Harvard.”

Harvard hired a law firm to conduct an external review of Stone’s program following The Athletic’s March 2023 report, which detailed allegations of hazing, initiation rituals, body shaming and an environment described by one person connected to the program as “a mental health hunger games.”

The Athletic reported that in some years of the “naked skate,” freshmen were told to do a “Superman” slide on the ice that left some with ice burns and bleeding nipples. The “naked skate” occurred as recently as January 2023, the day following the publication of a story in The Boston Globe, which first reported allegations of Stone’s misconduct toward players. After one player became upset about the event, Stone and her staff met with the team and told them it was an unsanctioned activity.

According to an internal email from athletic director Erin McDermott obtained by The Athletic, the findings of the external review by law firm Jenner & Block made clear “that some traditions in recent years were experienced differently by different people and not all were comfortable with those activities or with expressing concerns relating to the program.”

At the time of her resignation, Stone said that “a coach knows in their heart when it is time for change” and said she looked forward to “supporting the next chapter in Harvard women’s hockey.” The news release announcing her departure did not mention the allegations against Stone or the external review. Following the review, the school announced that Harvard athletics would end team traditions “that are harmful to team culture” and undertake initiatives to address player safety and well-being.

Stone, in her lawsuit, said that she was not aware about inappropriate behavior such as the “naked skates” and that she stressed to players that any sort of hazing activity was prohibited. She also said that she “fostered an environment of respect and dignity” and that while Harvard “permits, if not openly encourages, male coaches to use their discretion in how to best coach and motivate the players on their respective teams, Coach Stone was harshly punished and excoriated for engaging in the same coaching strategies and behaviors.”

On Tuesday, Stone said that her priority has always been the well-being of her players and that she was instructed by Harvard to remain silent as she was embroiled in investigations and facing allegations from former players.

“As a result, incredible damage was done to my career, to my team, to my personal and professional reputation and to my life. Today with the filing of this lawsuit, my voice will at last be heard,” she said.

She did not take questions from reporters in attendance, citing the ongoing litigation.

Three former Harvard players — Kalley Armstrong, Nicole Corriero and Jamie Hagerman Phinney — spoke in defense of Stone, saying that she played a pivotal role in their personal and professional development and created a culture of high achievement and excellence within her program.

In the lawsuit, Stone also named 50 Jane Doe defendants, who she is suing for defamation. Stone alleged those parties made false statements to The Boston Globe and Harvard that resulted in reputational damage. She is also suing those unnamed defendants for conspiracy, saying that they falsely stated that she “engaged in hazing or fostered a culture of hazing.”

Stone characterized those who have spoken out against her as a “small number” of people who “have not felt supported.”

Miltenberg suggested that her rigorous coaching standard was the basis of players’ discontent:

“Some people who have been coddled all their life don’t like that.”

(Photo: Barry Chin / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

It’s the day before his first competitive game as Fenerbahce manager and Jose Mourinho has been accosted.

He is heading away from his pre-match press conference for the Champions League second-round qualifier against Lugano of Switzerland when he’s stopped by a man named Kai, a technician with the local media. Kai presents him with a large piece of art, depicting Mourinho with his two children. From the look of his hair in the picture, it’s based on an image that is probably at least 15 years old.

Mourinho looks slightly baffled at first, joking that he thought Kai, with his big mass of curly hair “was (Marc) Cucurella”. But he does actually seem relatively touched (well: half touched, half amused) and gets someone else to take a picture of him and Kai holding the art.

“He’s the Special One!” says Kai afterwards, and he genuinely did say that. “Usually you can’t get near someone like him, so I just wanted to show him he’s appreciated and give him some of my art.”

The Athletic regrets to inform you that Mourinho didn’t actually take the piece with him. There’s a brief conversation about framing it, but Kai goes back to his work with the art under his arm. I hope he gets it to him somehow.

If nothing else, this illustrates that Mourinho still engenders a peculiar brand of fascination. You can say you don’t if you like, but you did click on this article. You must be keen to find out something about him, even if you think you’re rubbernecking at the wreckage of a once great career. He is still compelling, sometimes in a grim way, sometimes through flashes of the old Jose, the occasional flicker of a fading sun.

The classic perception of Turkish football is that it is a pseudo retirement home, a place for players who aren’t quite up to the top leagues anymore. It is a little unfair, but there is some truth to it.

As such, it is easy to think that Mourinho accepting the Fenerbahce role — five months after Roma sacked him — is an admission that he just can’t hack the big jobs anymore. At 61, with a hall-of-fame CV in his past, he has retreated to a relative footballing backwater for the same reason that all those players have.

The other way of looking at it is that it’s incredible he hasn’t managed in Turkey before. This is a footballing country that thrives on chaos and conflict, which fosters paranoia and a sense of injustice that isn’t always pretty to watch but is viscerally thrilling.

Is this part of his decline, or is it where he’s always meant to be?

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This is technically the earliest point in a season, by the calendar at least, that Mourinho has taken charge of a competitive game, though he has managed at a similar stage before: his Tottenham Hotspur side played Bulgaria’s Lokomotiv Plovdiv in the Europa League second qualifying round in 2020-21.

Still, rather than feeling self-conscious about a man of his reputation participating at such an early stage, he spun it as a positive. “I don’t like friendlies,” he said the day before the game. “We train to play matches. And tomorrow we have a match.”

Lugano’s 6,300-capacity stadium was deemed unacceptable by UEFA for such an occasion, so the game is held 135 miles away in Thun, just south of Bern. Thun is a delightful, quiet lakeside town. It is the sort of place where a bus driver can stop for a chat with a friend without anyone getting annoyed. Try that sort of thing in London, Rome, Milan or Madrid and see how far it gets you.

The Storkhorn Arena, the venue for this game and home of FC Thun, who play in the Swiss second tier, is a curious place. New, out of town, theoretically picturesque given that it is surrounded by cloud-tipped mountains, but you have to walk around the shopping centre that is part of the same complex to actually see those mountains.

Despite this technically being the home game of the two-legged tie for Lugano, their supporters are massively outnumbered. Two and a half hours before kick-off, a few hundred Fenerbahce fans are already waiting for their team to arrive (although they’re ultimately disappointed: Jose et al are smuggled in via an underground entrance). At one point, a small group wearing the shirts of Galatasaray, Fenerbahce’s fierce rivals, turn up and are initially booed, but then briefly applauded.

Fenerbahce fans gather at Thun’s Storkhorn Arena (Nick Miller/The Athletic)

This early arrival isn’t necessarily an expression of pro-Mourinho enthusiasm: this is just what Fenerbahce fans specifically, and Turkish football fans generally, are like. Still, there is a sense of incredulity that Mourinho is at their club: he is their first manager with a Champions League/European Cup title on his CV since Guus Hiddink in 1990. “It’s an amazing thing for Fenerbahce,” says Okan, one of the fans waiting outside, before offering a warning. “But if he doesn’t win the title, he’ll just end up like all the others.”

Indeed. Mourinho has a tough act to follow. Last season, Fenerbahce won 99 points, the highest total in their history, and it would have been the highest in Turkish Super Lig history had Galatasaray not finished on 102, pipping them to the title. Coach Ismail Kartal might have reasonably expected to get a second crack, but no dice: a week after the season ended, Kartal was shoved out of the back door as Mourinho was welcomed through the front.

Mourinho is here partly as a political pawn, a Hail Mary attempt by club president Ali Koc to finally win a league title. Fenerbahce haven’t been Turkish champions since 2014, the longest dry spell in their history. Koc, from one of the wealthiest families in Turkey, was seen as the man to bring glory back to the Asian side of Istanbul, but his failure to deliver a title could well have seen him voted out at their presidential elections this summer.

Particularly when it was made known that his opponent, former club president Aziz Yildirim, had lined Mourinho up as coach if he won the election. But then, hey presto: Koc, with the help of Hull City owner Acun Ilicali, who is also on the Fenerbahce board, pulled a rabbit from a hat and it emerged that, plot twist, it was he who was talking to Mourinho. A week after Mourinho was unveiled in front of 30,000 fans at Fenerbahce’s Sukru Saracoglu Stadium, Koc was re-elected with 61 per cent of the vote.

When he emerged from the tunnel before the game, Mourinho headed straight to embrace his opposite number, Mattia Croci-Torti.

The Lugano manager is one of Swiss football’s up-and-coming coaches and a lifelong Inter Milan fan, so facing the man who won the treble with them in 2010 carried extra significance. “It will be a source of personal pride to face a coach like him,” Croci-Torti, 42, said before the game, “because it may never happen again.”

Mourinho had some advice for his opposite number Mattia Croci-Torti, the Lugano head coach (Piero Cruciatti/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Those pre-match cordialities were a distant memory when, just before half-time, Fenerbahce were awarded a penalty, which Croci-Torti protested with a little too much vigour for Mourinho’s liking. He stalks up the touchline to remonstrate with his opponent, in the manner of a wise old head telling the hot-headed young thing how one should behave.

“He was like myself when I was younger,” Mourinho says after the game, with a slightly wistful grin. “Speaks too much. Complains too much. It’s the emotion of youth. He was lucky because when I did it, always a red card.”

Before that penalty, Mourinho’s debut hadn’t been going well. Fenerbahce are behind after just four minutes, with some sharp work by Ayman El Wafi putting Lugano in front. On the touchline, Mourinho’s frustration grows — 12 minutes in, his hands are on his hips in the manner of a disappointed mother after Jayden Oosterwolde is dispossessed carelessly; his arms are outstretched after the ball is given away in midfield; he shoots an exasperated glance back to his bench when a corner doesn’t beat the first man.

But it’s all fairly low-energy irritation, more the grumblings of an old man tired of life than the sort of raging against the world we remember from Mourinho of days gone by. Until, that is, Dusan Tadic is fouled inside the box on the stroke of half-time for that penalty. Edin Dzeko converts, but it almost feels like it was Mourinho remonstrating with young Croci-Torti that has lit the spark, rather than simply the goal.

Everything is amped up after the break. Mourinho is much more animated and, after some brilliant footwork by Tadic and a perfectly timed run and finish by Dzeko, they’re ahead. For the rest of the game, they’re much more fluent — more than you might expect from a Jose Mourinho side. There’s a brief scare when Lugano equalise, but the 38-year-old Dzeko completes his hat-trick and substitute Ferdi Kadioglu whips one into the bottom corner. They ultimately win 4-3.

“It was a game with seven goals,” Mourinho said after the game. “People like goals,” he added, and there’s a delicious pause where you think he’s going to say, ‘I don’t care for them quite so much myself…’, but he doesn’t. This is, after all, a man who once described an Arsenal vs Tottenham game that finished 5-4 as a “hockey score”.

Mourinho congratulates Ferdi Kadioglu for scoring Fenerbahce’s fourth goal (Piero Cruciatti/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Mourinho doesn’t quite celebrate these goals with the knee slides or coat-flapping dashes of old, but there was a primal roar, particularly from the last two. There are more glimpses of classic Mourinho in his post-match comments, including a lengthy gripe about the artificial pitch — “Honestly, I don’t understand why UEFA allow Champions League games on a plastic pitch” — about Lugano not returning the ball to Fenerbahce following an injury and, of course, about the referee. Mourinho changes, but at his core, he’s still the same old Jose.

When you think about Mourinho managing in a country that is ranked ninth in UEFA’s league coefficients, it is difficult not to remember the time that he sniffily put down Manuel Pellegrini, saying that if Real Madrid were to fire him he would never have to stoop so low as to manage Malaga, as Pellegrini had.

From that perspective, you could be forgiven for revelling in his perceived fall. You could also be forgiven for wondering why he still bothers. He could happily sit back and enjoy retirement, enjoy his money, enjoy life.

Mourinho in a typically forthright mood at the post-match press conference (Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Fenerbahce offers the things that Mourinho appears to need. It’s a colossal club in a city and a country that thrives on all the things he thrives on. It’s a club that uses conflict as fuel, as does he. Watching him during this game — stalking up and down the touchline, yelling at his players, picking a fight with a manager 20 years his junior who is taking charge of his first Champions League game — you realise why he hasn’t given it up. What would he be without it?

Mourinho and Fenerbahce and Turkish football might be the perfect combination. Or they could be a cocktail that blows up with more force than any of them can cope with. It really could go either way.

Mourinho tends to thrive when his club needs him more than he needs them, or at least when he can realistically perceive that to be true. And Fenerbahce need him.

This game won’t be the start of Mourinho’s most glorious era — his great achievements are almost certainly in the past — but it might be the start of Mourinho’s most ‘Mourinho’ era. You get the feeling this is perfect for him.

It’s going to be worth watching, whatever happens.

(Top photo: Piero Cruciatti/Anadolu via Getty Images)

U.S. women’s national team defender Tierna Davidson has described anti-LGBTQ social media posts previously shared by teammate Korbin Albert as creating “a difficult situation that has obviously affected me personally given what she was speaking on.”

Davidson, who is openly queer, went on Sarah Spain’s podcast, “Good Game with Sarah Spain”, and talked about her feelings regarding Albert’s actions, which included a repost of a sermon given in a Christian worship space talking about how being gay and “feeling transgender” is wrong.

Albert apologized for the post on her Instagram, which recirculated in March 2024. Since then USWNT head coach Emma Hayes has publicly backed Albert, saying in a June press conference, “There’s no denying there’s been a lot of work that’s been going on in the background to work with Korbin.”

On Spain’s podcast, Davidson said, “I think that it’s difficult, because as a team we have always wanted to be very welcoming to all of our fans, to all players that walk through the locker room, and so to have that in our space is very difficult.”

The USWNT has previously used its platform to support trans rights, among other topics, both individually and collectively. In 2022 during the SheBelieves Cup, players wore wrist tape bearing the message “Protect Trans Kids.” The gesture came during a game in Texas, where, at the time, Texas governor Greg Abbott referred to children transitioning as “child abuse” and directed licensed professionals who work with children to report the parents of trans children to state authorities.

“Whether or not it’s something that you grew up with, or it was instilled upon you from a young age and you might not know better, it is something that can hurt other people,” Davidson said.

“It was difficult for me when it first happened, and it’s been hard to hear how fans have been taking it because I feel like I want to be able to represent the queer community really well on this team. I want to have fans feel really welcome and feel like they can see themselves on this field in this team. I don’t want there to be any sort of feeling that they’re not welcome here.”

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Davidson also said she thought Albert had “gone through a lot of learning,” in accord with Hayes’ statements about any possible private conversations being held within the team.

“We have to learn from what we do in our lives and how people react to it, and understand the hurt that we can cause,” said Davidson. “I have always believed in the ability for people to learn and for people to change and to evolve and that sometimes requires a very difficult experience, and I think this is that moment for her…. It’s up to her. But I think she’s continuing to do that education and it’s important she expresses that as she learns. So I think the ball’s kind of in her court for that.”

Davidson also spoke to Spain about Hayes’ work with the team in the short time they’ve had to prepare for the Olympics, including trying to instill more tactical flexibility into the team and being able to adjust to various opposition tactics on the field.

Davidson said, “I really feel like we’re playing a chess match… You might notice some differences. Certainly you might notice players in different positions, but also how we’re moving the ball, the spaces we want to get into or how we get there.”

Davidson’s comment on Albert can be heard in full at the 26:44 mark in Spain’s podcast.

(Photo: Harry How, Getty Images)