Story updated on April 21
After sexual misconduct allegations against a San Jose State athletic trainer were made public on Friday, current athletes from SJSU’s women’s swimming and diving team said they lack confidence in the university’s second round of investigations.
USA Today published an article, detailing SJSU’s reinvestigation of Scott Shaw, director of sports medicine and head athletic trainer, who allegedly touched female athletes beneath their undergarments more than a decade ago.
SJSU women’s swimming and diving team members from the 2019-20 season told the Daily that they didn’t like how the university did not consider every account of Shaw’s behavior as part of the 2009 investigation.
“It’s so unfair that this university has swept everything under the rug for so long. These girls have given everything,” said Madison Grimes, a liberal studies teacher preparation junior and SJSU swimmer over the phone. “They gave everything that they could to represent San Jose State in the best way possible and then they were rewarded with this. I’m just, like, really angry about it.”
Sage Hopkins, head coach of the women’s swimming and diving team, compiled nearly 300 pages of notes with accounts from 17 former swimmers since 2009 and sent the file to the SJSU Title IX office in 2018, according to USA Today.
The Daily attempted to reach Hopkins, but his attorney, Paul Smoot, said Hopkins is “not able to respond to any inquiries at this time.”
Fourteen athletes alleged that in 2009, Shaw put his hands under their bras, often massaging their breasts or sometimes exposing their nipples. Five of the former swimmers also alleged that Shaw touched them beneath their underwear; one told USA Today that Shaw allegedly massaged her breast over her bra and another alleged he put his hand within a half inch of her nipple.
USA Today reported that Hopkins disclosed the allegations to university police in 2009, but Shaw was never arrested or charged.
The university cleared Shaw’s alleged behavior in 2009, according to a statement SJSU provided to USA Today.
Reopening the investigation
In a campuswide email sent Friday evening, SJSU President Mary Papazian confirmed SJSU received a complaint against an athletic trainer in 2009. The university’s human resources department investigated at the time and found no wrongdoing.
However, Papazian stated in her email that the university has reopened the investigation after the NCAA and Mountain West Conference forwarded Hopkins’ compiled notes to SJSU in December 2019.
“Because I was not at SJSU at the time of the investigation and the allegations were serious, I reopened the matter to review the original investigation,” Papazian said. “To avoid any potential conflicts of interest, an independent investigator was hired in January 2020 to conduct the investigation.”
Papazian and Tuite are not available for comment, SJSU Media Relations Specialist Robin McElhatton told the Daily over the phone on Friday.
Tracey Tsugawa, SJSU’s Title IX officer and key investigator who reconnected with the 2009-10 swimmers, informed the swimmers in early March of her resignation. The university said she did not provide a reason for resigning.
The new investigation process will be overseen by Linda Hoos, the systemwide Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation and Title IX compliance officer for the California State University, according to the statement sent to USA Today.
“To make it abundantly clear, SJSU will take appropriate action if any misconduct has taken place, regardless of the timeframe,” Papazian stated in her campuswide email.
Swimmers from the 2009 investigation told USA Today that SJSU’s investigation was insufficient.
The university said it investigated one athlete’s complaint against Shaw and treated the other 17 allegations as witness statements in the singular matter, according to USA Today.
“I mean, there’s 17 accounts just on the swim team,” said Maleah Schmidt, a sociology senior on the 2019-20 swim team over the phone. “I feel like 17 people from one team are not gonna all be lying.”
Resignations, alleged retaliation
Current SJSU swimmers said their skepticism about how SJSU administration and athletics handled the investigation stems from mistreatment their coach allegedly faced for addressing the swimmers’ allegations.
“Sage [Hopkins] has gone to battle for us and put it all on the line and he’s getting retaliated against, which is horrible when he should be commended for the steps he’s taken,” said Jacqueline Nisson, environmental studies senior and 2019-20 swimmer, in a phone call.
According to USA Today, SJSU Athletics Director Marie Tuite directed her second-in-command, Steve O’Brien, to discipline Hopkins in February while the new investigation was underway.
O’Brien told USA Today that the disciplinary measures stemmed from an allegedly hostile email exchange between Hopkins and Eileen Daley, senior associate athletics director for academics and student services, which caused Daley and Tuite to raise concerns about Hopkins’ “mental state.”
Tuite fired O’Brien on March 2 “without explanation,” according to USA Today.
“[Hopkins] would literally, like, jump in front of a bullet for any one of us and I just really appreciate all the fight that he has for us,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt said she immediately emailed Papazian after receiving the campuswide email saying that it’s ridiculous that she’s kept on Shaw and that “we need to be empowering the female athletes and not covering crimes against them.”
In January, the university and Shaw agreed that he would not treat any SJSU athletes during the investigation, according to a statement the university provided to USA Today.
The USA Today article also stated that in 2009, there weren’t any NCAA or SJSU policies that required a same-sex chaperone in the room during training sessions.
Now, the university’s sports medicine policy requires a chaperone to be present when a trainer treats “intimate or potentially intimate” areas on athletes of the opposite sex “for the protection of the student-athlete and the medical practitioner.”
Athlete react
When this investigation resurfaced on Friday, SJSU swimmer Madison Grimes said she was enraged by the situation, but was more focused on how the previous investigation
seemed “dirty.”
“I think that whoever was hired for this investigation knew the people not to talk to,” Grimes said. “They intentionally did not interview the people that had seen Scott because if they had, then . . . there would be nothing that they could do to cover it up.”
Schmidt said that she was angry at SJSU for not firing Shaw and said Papazian’s email didn’t provide any comfort.
Schmidt created a petition to demand the school to fire Shaw on Avaaz, an online activist network organization, which currently has more than 300 signatures as of publication time.
Her goal is 1,000 signatures but she said she doesn’t expect the petition to cause the administration to fire Shaw, but it would add to the USA Today article and hopefully would lead him to getting fired, Schmidt said.
“He’s gotta go,” she said.
But both Grimes and Schmidt said Tuite has just as much of a hand in keeping Shaw’s alleged actions and subsequent investigation “covered up” and should get fired as well.
Grimes said she was also rereading the 17 letters that student-athletes delivered to Papazian in May 2019, which contained grievances against the athletic department and its leadership and realized how Tuite was mentioned in almost all of them.
“I’m just so confused about how she still is able to work in education with athletes. Like, I just don’t understand how she still has a job,” Grimes said.
They were both aware of Tuite’s history at the University of Washington in 2001 in which she used mediation in a sexual assault accusation case, according to previous Spartan Daily reporting.
The student in that case, who spoke anonymously, accused the university of mishandling the case, but the King County Court in Washington state cleared university officials in 2009 of any legal misconduct in regard to how they handled the accusations.
“The fact that she was hired here after that is embarrassing. Like, that is disgusting,” Grimes said.
SJSU 2019-20 swimmer Jacqueline Nisson said that Tuite and Papazian can say all they want, but “actions speak louder
than words.”
“I think that [Papazian] is full of crap,” Schmidt said. “I think that [campuswide email] was just a blanket statement to try to calm down some of the heat that they’re probably, most definitely, getting. But I think that it was BS.”
Scott Shaw's lawyer, Lori Costanzo, emailed the Spartan Daily on April 21 with a statement regarding the allegations against Shaw:
Scott Shaw has been an employee in good standing with San Jose State University for nearly fourteen years. Prior to that he served as the Head Athletic Trainer at Cal State Northridge for five years, as Assistant Athletic Trainer at Saint Mary’s College for 9 years, and as the Head Athletic Trainer for De La Salle High School (1990-1992) and Alhambra High School (1989- 1990). At no time were allegations ever made against him.
Unfortunately, the SJSU women’s swim and dive coach, Sage Hopkins, cannot let some things go. Apparently being reprimanded by college officials sparked Hopkins to resurrect his 300-page report – which he, alone, compiled and gave to news reporters. It cannot be overstated that the University conducted a thorough investigation immediately after one allegation was made in 2009. At that time, it was determined that Scott Shaw did nothing wrong. Virtually no new allegations have surfaced since 2009 other than Sage Hopkins’ self-serving compilation of hearsay and rants against the University’s Athletic Department.
Scott Shaw complied with school authorities at every stage of their investigation 11 years ago, and will continue to cooperate in whatever way necessary to ensure he is, yet again, cleared of all wrongdoing—despite Hopkins’ fervent attempts to wrongfully and very publicly destroy his reputation.
