It was announced yesterday that Youngstown State women’s lacrosse coach Kendyl Clarkson, a scant seven months after being named to the position, was being relieved of her duties.
Clarkson, who came over from St. Bonaventure, had a 2-5 record in 2023 as head coach. She had won her most recent game against Gardner-Webb on Tuesday, and had a full Mid-America Conference schedule ahead of her.
This makes Clarkson’s dismissal incredibly curious in terms of timing. Usually, if an athletic department fires a coach in midseason, there had to have been a very serious cause to do so. Absent a cause, especially in the first year, a precipitating event could be the discovery of some kind of misconduct or resume-padding in the hiring process.
But TopOfTheCircle.com has learned of a recent incident involving alcohol and some of the players. We don’t know if any of the players on the team were suspended formally because of this incident, but we did notice that there were two Penguins who started the first six games of the 2023 season but did not play at all against Gardner-Webb.
This story has yet to be fully written, so we can’t verify a lot of the more tabloidesque assertions about why Clarkson was fired. However, it will be interesting to see what allegations are proven to be true.
