At its essence, recruiting in college athletics comes down to trust. Coaches have to find the players they’ll trust with their livelihoods. Players need to find coaches that they trust will help cultivate their athletic, academic and social skills.

And, just as important, parents of athletes need to trust the coach under whom they’re sending their son or daughter to play, live and mature.

When Keith Cieplicki became head coach of the Syracuse women’s basketball team, he inherited that responsibility from former coach Marianna Freeman. The trust Freeman earned from parents transferred to Cieplicki.

After seeing the way Cieplicki’s handled the suspension of four players, he’d have a hard time earning my trust if I had a daughter in high school and he coveted her to become an Orangewomen.

When he suspended Tierra Jackson, April Jean, Marchele Campbell and Tracy Harbut – the first two decided to leave the team – for violating his team academic policy, he did the right thing. He set a policy and, in his mind, the players violated that policy. Maybe the players disagreed, but Cieplicki should be commended for creating and upholding high academic standards.

Naturally, the players’ parents had questions. They had every reason to believe the coach their daughters were playing for would answer them.

He didn’t, and that’s where he violated the trust of his players’ parents.

Candace Wells, Jean’s mother, said Cieplicki told Jean to tell her mother to stop calling him. Michael Campbell, Marchele’s father, couldn’t get Cieplicki to return several e-mails, either.

SU Director of Athletics Jake Crouthamel said Cieplicki may have decided not to call the concerned parents back because he wanted to avoid a shouting match with an angry mother or father.

That’s fine. A basketball coach doesn’t have to be a babysitter and, while in season, doesn’t need the distraction of a cranky parent belly-aching.

However, if you suspend a 19-year-old from playing basketball, the least her parent deserves is an explanation. Pick up the phone and return a call. Wells called that common courtesy, and she’s exactly right. If the parent becomes angry and irrational, by all means hang up the phone. But at least give them to chance to hear why their child can’t play basketball.

‘FROM MY POINT OF VIEW,’ Wells wrote in a letter to The Daily Orange, ‘IF YOU EXPECT TO SEND YOUR CHILD TO PLAY FOR THIS MAN, I WOULD THINK LONG AND HARD BEFORE I WOULD SUBJECT THEM TO THIS KIND OF UNFAIR ABUSE.’

First, a disclaimer: If there were five horsemen of the apocalypse, Angry Sports Parent would have saddled up and rode alongside Pestilence. Few can become as irrational and unreasonable as an upset parent of an athlete. It’s wholly possible that the claims the parents made are untrue and biased.

It’s easy to see why Cieplicki didn’t want to deal with the parents. Regardless it was his responsibility to do so..Since he’s been at Syracuse, Cieplicki has demonstrated most qualities of a great college basketball coach. He preaches discipline and defense. He keeps academics in the forefront. He’s an affable guy and a superb recruiter.

But he lost the one thing that trumps those, a fundamental aspect of coaching and teaching that reaches beyond X’s and O’s. Cieplicki lost his players’ parents’ trust.

It won’t be hard for him to get it back. All it’ll take is a phone call.

Published on January 15, 2004 at 12:00 pm