“Hurt. Shocked. Angry. Disappointed. Bewildered. Bombarded. Scared. Sad. Lost. Unknown. No Answer.”
It’s a list of emotions Pokey Chatman stoically conveys when asked to describe her feelings about March 7, the day she announced her resignation as LSU women’s basketball coach amid allegations of inappropriate conduct with one or more former players.
More than five months after leaving the University, Chatman sits in the bleachers of the Catholic Youth Organization’s Baton Rouge gym. She spent her Saturday teaching “sugar-high” preteens the basics of basketball. No longer does she wear the purple and gold of LSU, but rather a blue- and black-lettered “Maximum Effort” Coach Pokey Basketball Camp T-shirt.
“The court never changes,” Chatman says. “For a coach, it’s your comfort zone. The faces may change, the level may change, the participants may change, but the game doesn’t change.”
But the game has changed for Chatman. There’s no Sylvia Fowles, no NCAA championship on the line and the afternoon’s biggest frustration is begging dribble-happy campers to hold the balls above their heads.
But the faces and level of the game will soon be changing again for Chatman, who recently accepted an associate head coach position with Russia’s Spartak Moscow Region team. She will coach high-profile WNBA players Tina Thompson, Lauren Jackson, Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi.
After frenzy, speculation and rampant rumors she says took her to the depths of “survival mode” and back again, it’s a return to coaching some doubted she would ever make.
THE 11th HOUR
With three consecutive Final Fours under her belt, Chatman was primed to enter the 2007 NCAA Tournament as a seasoned veteran. Her March 7 resignation generated scrolling TV banners, an e-mail bombardment to Chatman’s inbox and endless Internet message board gossip.
“I’m not even clear on [the events of March 7] because of the way things happened,” she says. “I’m kind of glad I’m not as clear on it because that means I’m leaving it alone, and I’m moving forward. And that is the honest-to-God truth.”
University officials did not confirm, until a week later, that assistant coach Carla Berry reported allegations of Chatman’s misconduct. Berry announced her own resignation in April soon after new Lady Tigers coach Van Chancellor took the helm.
But what transpired inside the walls of the Athletic Administration building in the days prior to the March 7 announcement remains largely unknown to the general public.
“A couple of people on my staff … felt as if they had to warn me,” Chatman says. “And at the 11th hour, they warned me. That’s what transpired on [March] 6 and 7. But obviously, people were aware of [what was going to happen] before March 6.”
The level of awareness is documented through Senior Associate Athletic Director Judy Southard’s trip to the Feb. 22 away game at Vanderbilt University. LSU Senior Associate Athletic Director Herb Vincent later confirmed to The Daily Reveille that after Berry reported the allegations in mid-February, the department sent Southard to observe Chatman’s behavior with team members.
“No,” Chatman answered when asked if she knew Southard was sent to observe her behavior. “Judy goes to Nashville all the time because she has friends in Nashville. Judy Southard traveling with the women’s basketball team means that she gets dropped off at the airport and she rides on the charter plane. She doesn’t stay at our hotel, she doesn’t eat with us, she doesn’t come into the locker room … that’s the extent of her traveling with us.”
Southard’s own e-mail, sent Feb. 22, seems to echo Chatman’s description of her limited observations.
“Pretty much keeping my normal routine, which is to say that I don’t hang around the team a lot,” Southard wrote to Vincent. “But they know I’m here, and I know Carla would call if anything went wrong …”
Chatman said little on the specific events surrounding her resignation.
“What did LSU report?” Chatman responded when asked if she ever had an inappropriate relationship with a player on her team. “Has a victim been named? End of story.”
Chatman’s been offered four book publishing deals since the resignation but says it’s not yet time to tell all. “When you’re armed with the most information, it helps you deal with things,” she says.
Chatman settled with the University in June for $160,000 and says the pressure to “feed a public frenzy” will not help her move forward in life.
EMERGING AGAIN
Many question why Chatman stayed silent, where she was and what she did in the days after her departure. Some reports declared she fled to Florida. Completely false, she says. Rather, she stayed at home in Baton Rouge or visited her sister in New Orleans.
“I was committed to doing my part in minimizing the madness and laying low,” Chatman says of her disappearance from the public eye.
At home with friends and family, she eagerly watched the Lady Tigers’ rise to their fourth consecutive Final Four. The distraction, she says, was a welcome one.
“You’re in the heat of the battle in a championship season, and that helps you hone in on what’s more important,” Chatman says. “All the days, and hours, and sweat and tears that everyone has put into it … regardless of stepping down and not being there, that was my team, to me. The public, everyone else, LSU … [what they thought] didn’t matter.”
Watching the Lady Tigers fall short in the Final Four, from a couch rather than coaching bench, was not easy. “[Friends and family] can just get up, leave the sofa, and they’re done,” she says. “What took place in March and April, that was a two-month ordeal for people, and then they go about their business. That was 20 years of LSU for me. It was a different type of adjustment.”
Chatman said support made the adjustment easier.
“Players, coaches, family, friends, neighbors … I got 3,000 e-mails, even from Board of Supervisor people who were supposed to be against me,” she says. “It was overwhelming.” That support reassured Chatman her return to the Louisiana coaching clinic scene would be welcome. She says the allegations against her have not affected camp interest or attendance. “Obviously, they are smart enough [to know better],” she said by phone days before the camp. “It speaks volumes for what they believe if we’re turning people away.”
CAMP
Scores of youngsters swarmed Chatman after Saturday’s camp conclusion. Most were seeking autographs, some were seeking a chance to greet their favorite coach.
One young fan is 13-year-old Jessica Donald, a member of Baton Rouge’s Amateur Athletic Union Lady Tigers team.
“She’s very nice and sweet,” Donald said of Chatman. “She’s patient with us and knows how to teach.”
Donald said Chatman’s resignation was surprising to all of her AAU teammates.
“It’s so sad because I thought she was so good for the team,” Donald said. “I’m really disappointed I won’t see her at the games.”
Donald’s coach, Anika Moore-Williams of Baton Rouge, has been friends with Chatman for more than 10 years. Williams brought several of her team members to the camp, including 12-year-old daughter Zhané.
“I knew Pokey would come back,” Moore-Williams says. “She has such a drive. I really felt for her because she worked so hard to get where she was. It just wasn’t fair.”
Moore-Williams, 36, said she had no concerns bringing her team to Chatman’s camp, even after the allegations.
“Rumors are rumors,” she says. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. If they knew her, it wouldn’t even be a question. She could coach my daughter anytime.”
Moore-Williams says she still supports the LSU Lady Tigers, although she disapproves of the way the University handled Chatman’s resignation.
“It could have been handled much better,” she says. “They should have spoken with Pokey thoroughly. To lose a good coach over something that foolish.”
One fan at Chatman’s camp, Andrea Snearl, 43, of Brusly, says she will not use her season tickets. Instead she will keep up with Chatman’s career in Russia.
“The way [LSU] handled it was just pretty messed up,” she says. “It just doesn’t seem right to go without her there.”
Also in high demand for autographs was camp coach and former LSU assistant coach Christie Sides, who announced her resignation in April. Sides said she’s planning a future career in organizing high school basketball camps.
“I made a decision to go in a different direction,” Sides says of her resignation. “I’m happy as long as I can be teaching.”
RUSSIA
The TV news banners recently scrolled once again for Chatman. But this time the ticking news was not of a resignation scandal but of word that Chatman accepted a coaching position with a professional women’s basketball team in Moscow.
“It went across the ticker on ESPN that I took the job, and about 20 minutes later, I had a text message from Lauren Jackson,” Chatman says. “And about an hour later, Sue Bird sent me an e-mail. Then [Diana] Taurasi e-mailed me. They were basically saying, we’re glad it’s official, glad you’re on board.” Such teams are popular with many WNBA superstars who spend their off-seasons playing out of the country where pay is often more lucrative. Taurasi makes 10 times her WNBA salary. Chatman declined to divulge her paycheck but hinted she will certainly not be taking a step down from her University salary.
Taurasi says Spartak Moscow Region owner Shabtai von Kalmanovic, who self-funds the team because of his passion for basketball, asked for input on the best U.S. coaches available. Taurasi says the allegations against Chatman were never mentioned.
“Sometimes things might look different from a different perspective,” Taurasi said Saturday by phone from Phoenix. “We don’t judge her. No one really knows the details. She has a clean slate … it was never brought up.”
The clean slate may be appealing to some, but Chatman says she has no desire to erase her LSU history. “I have no animosity… not to the innocent people that had nothing to do with anything,” she says. “I’m not going to eliminate them because I was connected to them through LSU.”
And as Chatman stocks her supply of mittens, brushes up on Russian and packs for the cold winter ahead, she says she’s excited to finally get moving on the rest of her life.
“The LSU chapter is done, but the book is not complete,” Chatman says.
She breaks into a wide smile when listening to a quote she once said about her mentor – deceased former LSU women’s basketball coach Sue Gunter. When Gunter died in 2005, Chatman said, “I feel a great sense of responsibility to carry on her legacy at LSU.”
Chatman paused before addressing how she felt about her quote. “I felt that’s what I did to the best of ability,” she says. “In the short run, Sue would be pissed off, but in the long run, she would eventually smile as well.” Inspiration from Gunter often gave Chatman peace of mind during the past months, she says. Seemingly insignificant moments, like “craving a cup of coffee” or fishing from a pier, remind Chatman of Gunter’s day-to-day mind-set and inspiration.
“I know she would have been so proud of me for handling things the way I handled them and not getting into a pissing contest in the papers,” Chatman says. “She was so good at seeing past the clouds. At the end of the day, it doesn’t change the things that are important to you. So don’t stop being you. Be who you are … that’s part of what she taught me. And that’s what I’m proud of … the way I handled it.”
—-Contact Amy Brittain at [email protected]