“Andrew played harder than some of the other boys wanted to play.”
/Thanks to readers Ari and John for these stories related to Andrew Giuliani suing Duke University over coach O.D. Vincent dismissing the senior from the golf team.
Ellis Henican in Newsday:
Late yesterday, his attorneys filed a federal lawsuit in North Carolina, contending the university has violated its obligations to him as a student-athlete and demanding he be invited back to Duke's state-of-the-art golf-training facility. It's obviously been a tense few months on campus.
On Feb. 11, the lawsuit says, men's golf coach "O.D. Vincent announced to the team that he was unilaterally canceling Andrew's eligibility to participate in the University's Athletics Program immediately and indefinitely. Andrew and his teammates were shocked. Andrew had no prior notice of what was about to happen. At no time was Andrew ever given an opportunity to defend himself; instead he was summarily dismissed."Dan Slater posts these details on the WSJ's blog. Unfortunately for Vincent, it reads like satire.
The suit claims that incidents of misconduct that Vincent cited in his reasons for expelling Giuliani were not appropriate reasons for expulsion, such as:
• On Feb. 2 Giuliani flipped his putter a few feet to his golf bag.
• On Feb. 3, Giuliani leaned over his driver and it broke, and “in O.D. Vincent’s telling, this became ‘throwing and breaking’ a club.”
• On Feb. 3, Giuliani walked ahead of his playing partner at Treyburn Golf Course and later that day “gunned the engine” of his car and “drove fast while leaving the golf course parking lot.”
• On Feb. 4, during a golf-team football game, “Andrew played harder than some of the other boys wanted to play.”
• On Feb. 10, while Giuliani was eating an apple, a teammate twice hit the golfer’s hand and knocked the fruit to the ground. After that same teammate “slammed a door hitting Andrew’s face,” Giuliani “tossed the apple at a teammate, glancing off the side of his face.”