WSU defends baseball coach
PULLMAN – Washington State University administrators are defending baseball coach Don Marbut after a report detailing discrepancies in his resume and other allegations about past conduct surfaced Thursday.
A story appearing in the Seattle Times outlined mistakes in Marbut’s biography and also suggested the coach filed an improper invoice and misused school property as coach and athletic director at Edmonds Community College. On Thursday, WSU administrators began to explain – and to a certain extent, deny – the apparent problems regarding the coach’s resume and conduct.
“We’ve obviously researched that and want people to know that we don’t take these accusations lightly,” WSU athletic director Jim Sterk said. “But we felt after going through and investigating … and doing our research on the accusations that there was nothing that substantiated any further action by us.”
Sterk instructed senior associate director of athletics Marcia Saneholtz to investigate when questions about Marbut first surfaced in the fall. Saneholtz said she is satisfied WSU is on solid footing defending Marbut after speaking with an administrator at Edmonds.
“I asked her, ‘Is there a smoking gun out there?’ ” Saneholtz said. “I have this written down. And she said she doesn’t know of any smoking gun.”
Four errors have surfaced in regard to Marbut’s biography.
On multiple resumes, job applications or data sheets filed with WSU and Edmonds, Marbut claimed to have a teaching certificate from Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, Wash. A WSU course catalog credits Marbut with a master’s degree from Saint Martin’s. Neither is true, as Marbut was enrolled in the school’s certificate program but did not complete it.
His bio in previous years’ media guides and on the Cougars’ official Web site claimed that he was an all-conference player at Portland State and a team MVP in 1996. Both honors belong to Matt Dorey, who is now a volunteer assistant coach under Marbut at WSU.
Sports information director Rod Commons said Marbut’s all-conference status appeared on his WSU bio after someone in his office took that information from another story. The MVP award, Commons said, was mistakenly recorded when Marbut wrote on a questionnaire that he had been awarded that year for his offensive abilities.
On that same form, Marbut wrote that he attended Saint Martin’s and specified that he had no degree from the school, a piece of information absent on other forms Marbut filled out by hand. No date was on the questionnaire submitted by Marbut to the sports information office, although most coaches return it shortly after their hiring at WSU, Commons said.
Saneholtz said in a statement that the school has “never seen any document indicating he had a master’s degree” and assumed that the course catalog’s attribution of that degree was a “clerical error.”
Still, Marbut admitted after Thursday’s practice – the 18-6 Cougars open their Pacific-10 Conference season today at Stanford – that he had erred in some respects on his resume.
“I’ll take that,” he said. “We weren’t trying to mislead anybody. It’s a mistake that we learned, that I learned. It’s been damaging and rough on everybody.”
The errors have been corrected in the team’s 2006 media guide and on the team’s Web site.
Perhaps more troubling are the remaining allegations, the first of which regards the invoice.
That 2003 document, apparently submitted by Marbut, charged Edmonds for sports bags purchased from a company selling nothing but protein supplements. Marbut said he had no knowledge or memory of the invoice. The Times also wrote that Marbut had accepted payments in cash and by a personal check for use of Edmonds facilities in his time there as head coach as well.
Sterk said the Edmonds administrator’s word that no wrongdoing had taken place was enough for him.
“Anything that may come of it, we’ve got assurances from Edmonds Community College that they didn’t have any issues,” Sterk said, further elaborating the coach’s position. “He just said, ‘I tried to do everything by the book.’ “