On Monday, Oct 6, the Durango Herald, which comes from Durango, Colorado, published an article about allegations against Former Ferris State and Fort Lewis College men’s basketball head coach Bobby Pietrack.
Only a couple of weeks ago, on Friday, Sept. 26, Ferris State University announced that first-year head coach Bobby Pietrack had resigned, and assistant head coach Alex Fodness had been named interim head coach.
Ferris released a statement saying that Pietrack was resigning from his position and retiring from coaching altogether, saying he intended to retire from coaching due to a “serious health issue” and so he could move back to Colorado to be closer to family.
Pietrack was hired in May of this year from Fort Lewis College, where he had been coaching for almost a decade.
According to the Durango Herald, on April 2, 2024, Fort Lewis’s athletic department received a four-page, single-spaced letter accusing Pietrack of academic misconduct, threatening and coercive behavior, and the frequent use of racial, homophobic, and sexist slurs.
When asked for a comment from the Ferris State administration, Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications Dave Murray gave the statement.
“It would be inappropriate for me to discuss personnel issues,” Murray said on behalf of the university and athletics.
The letter had come from Pietrack’s former assistant coach, Daniel Steffensen. This letter started an internal investigation by Fort Lewis College, and only a month later, Pietrack resigned from his position.
But according to colleagues and former players, Pietrack used variations of the N-word, in writing, in the locker room, or being used in casual conversation, in and out of the office.
Three members of the Fort Lewis athletic department described a February 2024 incident where Pietrack used the “N-word” to describe a black student athlete, according to interviews done by David Pirrone, who is the director of compliance and community standards at Fort Lewis.
They also spoke of Pietrack’s repeated use of the term “Ninga or Ningas” to refer to black student-athletes and his frequent use of homophobic or sexist slurs to mock or describe gay, or female athletic co-workers.
Pirrone formally recommending Pietrack’s immediate termination, and according to an April 22, 2024 email to the athletic director. His email quoted staff members he interviewed, using brackets to clarify their sentiments.
One staff member at Fort Lewis said.
“We have all had these feelings and observations [about mistrust, racist, homophobic, and sexist comments] long before receiving Daniel Steffensen’s email.”
Fort Lewis College had reviewed multiple text messages they that Pietrack had sent to Steffensen and others, in those messages he used the word “negro” in casual conversation and made lewd comments about members of the female coaching staff.
In one message thread, a sender had shared an old photo of a female colleague of her on the basketball court, Pietrack responded.
“So sick of the women leader bullsh*t,” and “Why are they so special? Go to work like the rest of us….stains”
When Pietrack was confronted by the university about the texts, Pietrack said that he didn’t use any of those words in a “racial way” and said that his comments about female staff members were simply private conversations among friends, according to Pirrone’s report.
According to a former player of Pietrack’s “He used to call us African American players ‘ninjas’ all the time.” He explained that saying the word “Ninja,” was Pietrack’s way of saying the N-word without saying it outright.
The player, who is Black, had said that Pietrack said, “We got a bunch of ninjas. So we should be able to gang up on them and take it. They shouldn’t be able to take this game from you. They shouldn’t be able to get nothing from us.”
That same player said Pietrack was upset at not being able to use the N-word freely.
“His last year, before he resigned, there were way more African Americans on the team than we’d ever had,” the player said. “And you know, we usually use that word a lot, because that’s just how we played. I just know he made them stop saying it because he couldn’t say it too. He was just that type of guy.”
Pietrack personally took over Kot’s registration, something that Pietrack had never done before, and he limited Kot’s credit hours so he would remain eligible at FLC but fall short of the 96 credits needed to transfer, Steffensen said.
Steffensen admits that himself is not above what he witnessed. He observed and participated in the lewd, racist, sexist, and homophobic banter for years without reporting it to the college. Texts between him and Pietrack show that Steffensen also used the N-word liberally.
“I was wrong. I was inappropriate. It’s not OK,” Steffensen said.
After resigning in 2023, it took him a full year to write a letter detailing Pietrack’s alleged behavior.
“After I resigned, I tried to walk away quietly. I didn’t want to carry this burden,” Steffensen said. “I just wanted to walk away, and prayed it would disappear.”