Schools

Former Coach Joe McLoughlin Sues Collingswood School District, Alleges Bias

The former high school basketball coach alleges that the board did not re-hire him because he refused to go along with a directive to recruit more white players.

After almost a year of silence, a $10,000, open-ended, independent investigation that was ongoing for months, and an ugly falling-out with his bosses, former Collingswood High School basketball coach Joseph McLoughlin has filed a formal lawsuit against the district.


According to Phil Anastasia of Philly.com, McLoughlin maintains that he was not rehired as the boys basketball coach for 2013 because he refused an alleged directive from Collingswood High School Principal Edward Hill and Athletic Director Ronald Hamrick to recruit more white players for the team.

As a result of the distress from not retaining his post, McLoughlin—who is still teaching special education in the district—reports that he has suffered emotionally and physically, including "high blood pressure, anxiety...embarrassment, lost wages, and humiliation."

When the whole incident unfolded at a school board meeting last May, supporters of the winningest coach in school history claimed publicly and in no uncertain terms that he was a victim of racial politics in the district.

McLoughlin's then-attorney Dennis G. Young claimed that the coach has secretly recorded school administrators using racial epithets to describe their students, but no such recordings were ever produced. (McLoughlin has since retained the services of Charles H. Nugent, Jr.)

An avalanche of testimony from supporters of the coach followed in the weeks after, but the Board of Education maintained its decision not to reappoint McLoughlin, instead naming Patrick Dorney his sucessor.

“The decision about the coaching position is a separate issue,” Oswald told Patch in August 2012, when a months-old e-mail exchange between the two illustrated an increasingly strained dialogue seemingly centered around issues of player conduct.

“I’m the guy who knows all the reasons the decisions were made," Oswald said at the time. "There was not one notion that has anything to do with the players on the court.”   

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