Rene Portland's Controverseal Rule

For just under 30 years, Rene Portland was the head coach of the women's basketball team at Penn State University. She has brough the program much success with over 20 NCAA tourniment appearances, a Final Four appearance, multiple conference championships, and two conference tournament titles. She is among a short list of women basketball coaches to reach over 600 wins at one school, giving an overall record of 606-236 at Penn State. Although she was praised for making and keeping Penn State women's basketball a winning program, she was the centerpiece of a huge controversy.
She had only three rules for her players to abide by as she was head coach; no drinking, no drugs....and no lesbians. She forbid her players from associating with any lesbians even if they were straight women. As we saw in the film Training Rules, Jennifer Harris accused Rene Portland of kicking her off of the team because Rene believed her to be lesbian. Harris reported that her coach was threatening, intimidating, and hostile toward her just because of this assumption. Rene Portland was fined $10,000 along with other consequences, and was eventually forced to resign from her position at Penn State University. Aslo, in the film Training Rules, there were many other victims to Portland's demeaning attitute toward lesbians. There were a few other girls who suffered discrimination from Rene, or who were threated by her knowing that she had the power to kick them off the team, make transferring hard, and make playing anywhere else nearly impossible. Some girls were so afraid that they hid their sexual orientation and lied that they had boyfriends back home. I'm sure that there has been many other cases on the women's basketball team at Penn State under the reign of Rene Portland that have suffered this unfair behavior. One of the twins that we saw in the film state that Rene Portland stripped all of her love for the game away from her and that she had no desire to play anymore and she thanked Rene 100% for that. It just makes you wonder how many other girls she had threatened or discriminated against or even kicked off the team because of their sexual orientation. Jennifer Harris got kicked off the team because she was just accused of being a lesbian. Jennifer Harris is straight. How many other straight girls did Rene Portland kick off the team because she believed them to be lesbian, or because they were just simply associated with someone who was a lesbian? I appreciate Jennifer Harris being brave enough to stand up to Rene Portland and file a lawsuit. This new must have helped so many of her former victims when they heard the news. If I was one of them I would feel just. It is unreal that Rene Portland got away with doing this to so many girls, ruining their hopes and dreams just because of sexual orientation. And not knowing how many other girls hopes and dreams she sent down the drain makes it ten times worse when you think about the possibilities that may have happened.
Danielle Coffman
KIN 338i Section 06