Cathedral Alumni: Coaches' Firing was 'Personal'

Four months after being inducted into Cathedral High School’s , varsity basketball coach Carnell Suttles and his longtime assistant Larry Washington were sacked earlier this month — prompting some alumni to call the school’s dismissal of five black coaches in the last year racially motivated.

Suttles — who won six consecutive state sectionals and collected three state titles while serving as head coach during the last decade — declined to weigh in on the race question but said the dismissal was personal.

“The whole thing is personal, it isn’t anything but personal and it’s personal with [Athletics Director] Jimmy Lynch,” Suttles said.

Lynch referred questions to first-year principal Rashaun Martin, who said not renewing the five contracts of black coaches was circumstantial.

“It’s definitely not racially motivated,” said Martin, who was an administrator and teacher at Boston Latin School for nine years. “My school is 95 percent African American and Latino as it is. If you have something against African Americans this is not the place to be."

“I’m disheartened by the reaction concerning all the coaches," he added. "It’s unfortunate. I’m African American myself, which I think is lost in the discussion. These decisions do not happen in a vacuum. We have a process.”

The football, volleyball and cheerleading coaches also lost their jobs following the fall season. While the volleyball and cheerleading posts remain vacant, the football coach was replaced by a white faculty member Martin said is more than qualified for the job.

But many alumni who attended school with Suttles and Washington say they are looking for answers.

“The only assistant [football] coach who was kept is white, and the [football] coach who was hired is white and the AD himself that pushed for the firing of the coaches is white, is that also a coincidence?” William Baxter of the Class of 1978 said. “It’s not. It appears not to be a coincidence. [Martin’s answer is] not an acceptable answer in view of the fact that he never really gave a concrete reason for firing these coaches.

“He really needs to give some details. We would like to hear some details. As a contributing member of the alumni we would like to have some answers.”

(The assistant football coach referred to by Baxter has not been officially hired for next year as of yet.)

Martin, who hopes to hire a replacement basketball coach by July 1, declined to give specific reasons for Suttles and Washington’s termination but said the school’s expectations for their coaches were formally presented to the pair at least twice. The administration took issue with the coaches' discipline methods, practice schedule and punctuality, he said.

Martin also denied an allegation by former assistant coach Larry Washington that the administration believed players should earn Division 1 and 2 scholarships instead of playing mostly in non-scholarship Division 3 programs.

“Wins and losses never come into a determination whether someone has maintained their coaching position,” he said. “Certainly the school is by all means grateful for all the coaches have done with the teams since they took over the program in the mid 1990s.”

Suttles agreed that winning wasn’t emphasized when Lynch took over the program two years ago.

 “The problem is [in] the following years winning became everything,” said Suttles, a Cathedral alum who has won Coach of the Year honors from the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. “So you can’t flip the switch.”

Suttles said he disciplined players behind the scenes because he didn’t want to humiliate them in public. He also noted that they practiced daily but Washington said they often allowed players with other obligations such as homework to miss practice.

 “We received the academic award as a team from [Roxbury Community College] and then you’re going to tell us we’re not doing our job?” Suttles said.

Suttles also took issue with the fact that the headmaster and principal didn’t attend his final meeting with Lynch.

“If you have staff there for 15 years at least you should be man enough to sit in that meeting,” Suttles said, adding that Lynch told him the decision was in the best interest of the students. “When I asked the question to the AD what their best interest was he couldn’t answer the question.

“His exact answer to me was ‘I can’t.’”

Suttles and Larry Washington said they had a toxic relationship with Lynch from the beginning.

“My part of the story is you’ve been there two years and you’re gonna come in and tell us how to coach and run a program,” Washington said. “If our kids weren’t graduating I could see that...[but] we’re winning, our kids are going to school. What more do you want from us?"

“I love Cathedral High School," he said. "I went to Cathedral High since I was a kid. My beef is with the [Athletic Director]. You don’t come in and dictate.”

Martin said there has been turnover in other areas of the school as well since the current headmaster took over in 2007.

 “We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Martin said of firing Suttles and Washington, “but at this point it was determined a change was needed to be made, with all due respect to the coaches.”