What's up with Tennessee's women's track team?

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Parents angered after daughters' Tennessee track careers come to abrupt end



During his daughter’s official visit to Penn State in October of 2013, George Harvey sat beside coach Beth Alford-Sullivan during a dinner for track prospects.

The head of the Penn State track and field program had offered Morgan Harvey, one of the top hurdlers in the 2014-15 class, an 80-percent scholarship. She would have accepted, had she not received a full ride from Tennessee.

Harvey recalled the pleasant dinner conversation he shared with Alford-Sullivan in late June, after his family learned she would replace fired UT coach J.J. Clark.

“She knew Morgan,” Harvey said. “She had recruited her at Penn State. Why not have her at Tennessee?”

The question haunts him now.

“I would like to go on record and let people who are being recruited by Coach Sullivan know the type of person she is,” he said.

Morgan Harvey was among the six women Alford-Sullivan cut from the UT track team last month.

The dismissals occurred two weeks into practices, less than two months after the coach publicly praised the freshmen she inherited from Clark.

“My problem is the callousness of how she did this,” George Harvey said. “These girls gave up other scholarships to come to Tennessee, and basically they’re being screwed by this coach.”

UT announced Alford-Sullivan’s hire on June 24. On Aug. 6, she told the News Sentinel that the program’s 16-member signing class would arrive intact.

“Track athletes tend to be fairly loyal kids,” she said then. “I think they were happy with the hire.”

But on Sept. 24, parents said, Alford-Sullivan released the six athletes. Margaret Draper, Brooke Coltelli and sophomore Laura Morse were walk-ons. Morgan Harvey, Ariel Terrell and Shelbi White were scholarship sprinters and hurdlers from the signing class.

Sprinter Shelbi White of Alabama won 4-A titles in the 100, 200 and 400 events. Recruited exclusively by Clark, she chose a full scholarship to UT over full-ride offers from LSU, Auburn, Georgia, Texas among others.

Steven White, father of Shelbi White, recalls a conversation he had with his daughter before she was dismissed. She told him the coaches had reassigned her to practice with the veteran athletes because she was excelling. This made the Sept. 24 phone call he received even more confusing.

Other parents have similar stories. They say their daughters had done everything that was asked of them and had not encountered academic or disciplinary issues. The business-like dismissals, they say, came without warning.

On a Wednesday afternoon, Alford-Sullivan summoned the women to her office with a text message. Her entire staff was present. A box of Kleenex was within reach.

Parents say the coach bluntly informed the women she would not have recruited them, and told them they would not be a part of the team’s vision moving forward.

Steven White said he asked for an explanation when he drove to Knoxville to meet with Alford-Sullivan in her office on Sept. 26.

“She never could give me that vision,” he said. “Her statement was she didn’t fit into the direction her and her staff are going in. She never told me what that direction was. She never told me the reason why she cut my daughter.”

After their dismissals, the women’s names were removed from the track and field roster at UTSports.com. They were stripped of athletic privileges, including weight training, treatment and nutrition. They are allowed to use Tom Black Track, but only if team practices are not in session. Starting blocks, hurdles and other equipment are not available.

“They basically just told them, you are a nobody, and I’m going to treat you like a nobody,” Steven White said. “That’s how I feel the University of Tennessee treated my daughter.”

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