"He Got Screwed:" The Strange Case of Hurricane Julie and Basketball Coach and Kindergarten Teacher Nathan McGuire

If you’re a basketball fan, a recent opinion of the Minnesota Supreme Court may have caught your eye. It’s not every day that high school sports finds its way on to the news pages. The Supreme Court decided that high school coaches are not public officials and that they therefore have the right to sue parents who tell lies about them. 

With no disrespect to the news media involved, the reporting of this complicated case has been pretty episodic. Here’s what happened today. But, wait! I forget! What happened yesterday? What’s the whole story again?

Well, here’s the whole story, again, the strange tale of Hurricane Julie Bowlin and former Woodbury girls basketball coach and still kindergarten teacher Nathan McGuire. 

Meet Nathan McGuire

So, first, let’s meet Nathan McGuire, who has taught kindergarten in the South Washington County School District since 1998, and still does. He is also a middle school track coach, since 2001. He has six or seven years experience, now, as a girls head basketball coach at Henry Sibley and Holy Angels; and, from the fall of 2012 through January 2014, at Woodbury; and more recently at Minneapolis South. 

Meet Brooke Bowlin

Before we meet Hurricane Julie Bowlin, we should meet her daughter Brooke because, in the beginning, there was Brooke. Brooke Bowlin is a great athlete, make no mistake about that. She’s now playing softball, and apparently playing very well, at St. Cloud State. In fact, she and her siblings are all great athletes. Older brother Tom played wheelchair basketball at Southwest State. Matt played football at Augsburg. Younger sister Nicole plays basketball at Holy Family, as did Brooke.

But, first, back in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, Brooke played varsity basketball as a 7^th and 8^th grader at Holy Angels scoring 5 and 5.5 points per game. Not bad for a 7^th and 8^th grader. In 2011-2012, her head coach was—wait for it—Nathan McGuire, but in 2012-2013, he moved over to Woodbury, in the school district in which he already worked as a teacher and a track coach. 

Then, in the fall of 2013, Brooke Bowlin transferred to Woodbury high to play basketball, once again, for Nathan McGuire. But, this time, all hell broke loose.

Meet the Co-Defendants

But, before we meet Hurricane Julie Bowlin, it is also chronologically correct to introduce her co-defendants because McGuire’s troubles appear to have begun even before Hurricane Julie hit Woodbury. According to an earlier court decision that came before the Supreme Court decision cited above—this was a decision that denied McGuire’s request for reinstatement as Woodbury coach—the court states that “we accept as true the following factual allegations.” The factual allegations in question included that coach McGuire and his staff had decided not to include a player on their 2013 post-season roster “because she acted disrespectfully toward a referee” in a previous game. (A Woodbury parent said she often swore at referees from the bench.)

The girl’s mother, Joy Szondy, and another player’s parent, Chelon Danielson, complained to the Woodbury administration that the coaches had lied about the girls’ behavior, said the court. The girl herself, who has a different last name, and Danielson’s daughter were on the Woodbury roster throughout the 2012-2013 regular season but neither, according to another Woodbury parent, “was very good.” Aaliyah Danielson was in fact an outstanding soccer player and played one year of college soccer at the U. of North Dakota. But, basketball, again, according to a Woodbury parent who saw every game that year, not so much. But Danielson’s mom and Szondy of course thought their daughters were terrific and should have been playing a lot more minutes than they did. They would know!

Meet Hurricane Julie Bowlin

This particular storm was probably on its way to blowing over, however, when Hurricane Julie hit. As we have noted, in the fall of 2013, Brooke Bowlin transferred from Holy Angels to Woodbury. Well, technically, this was not a transfer. Kids, even athletes, can go wherever they want when they enter the 9^thgrade, and the Bowlins decided that Brooke would play for her former head coach at Holy Angels, now at Woodbury. She is listed on a pre-season roster published in the Breakdown Guidebook for 2013-2014. Mom, according to that Woodbury parent, assumed that Brooke would waltz into Woodbury and be handed a starring role on the girls basketball team, and was utterly incensed to find that Brooke would be expected to earn her playing time, like everybody else.

Now, keep in mind, Woodbury was not a bad team. They had gone 19-10 the year before, losing to St. Paul Central in the Section 4AAAA final. And, they started 2013-2014 at 5-1 before things fell apart. So, when Bowlin, a 5-8 freshman guard, arrived at Woodbury in the fall of 2013, the Royals were not exactly bereft of guards. They also had Kayla Bilksi, a 5-9 junior who went on to score 9.5 ppg that year. They also had senior captain Kailey Hakes, who went on to score 9 ppg before tearing her ACL, and they had 5-3 junior Madi Yochum, who went on to score 6 ppg that year. And, they already had a promising group of underclassmen before Bowlin arrived. They included Cecile Kieger, who went on to score 9 ppg as a freshman and (later) 16 as a senior; and Elizabeth Jordahl and Ellie Kriebich, who scored 5 and 3.5 ppg as freshmen; and guards Elizabeth Edinger and Rachel Hakes, who scored 5 and 2.5 ppg as 8^thgraders, but went on to score 12 and 20 points as seniors (Edinger at Cretin as it turned out, Hakes at Woodbury).

Bowlin, by way of comparison, scored 5 ppg as a freshman after becoming eligible at Holy Family and scored 14 ppg as a senior (against Class AA competition while the Woodbury girls, of course, faced Class AAAA competition for the most part).

With all of this talent, it hardly seems to have been an obviously ridiculous idea not to hand a starting job to the newcomer, Bowlin, but to spread the minutes around in the fall of 2013 to see which combinations worked the best. And that’s what coach McGuire and his assistants did. And, keep in mind, this was in the fall, long before a single official game had been played.

But, according to the same court opinion cited above, “Julie and Tom Bowlin complained to the school and the district because their daughter was not getting enough playing time.” RiverTowns.net (September 4, 2015) provides other details. 

“Before a game was played in the 2013-14 season, a meeting was held with the girl, her parents, the high school principal, the athletic director, two assistant coaches and McGuire during which the parents complained about playing time, the lawsuit alleges. The coaching staff hadn’t decided who had made the team, who would start and how playing time would be handled. Still, the parents wanted an update about their child’s status on the team.

“McGuire said the Bowlins talked to an influential parent in the program, leaving the other parent with the impression that they were trying to get the head coach fired, the lawsuit alleges. The parents demanded high school administration remove McGuire as head coach, then got the Minnesota Department of Education involved.

“The player attended one more practice. Within a week the player had transferred, without competing for Woodbury.”

Before leaving Woodbury, the Bowlins had found kindred spirits in Joy Szondy and Chelon Danielson. The court further acknowledged that the three moms “continued to seek McGuire’s removal even after their daughters were no longer playing on the team.” Szondy’s daughter had graduated. Danielson’s had quit basketball.

Category 5

As a result of the complaints, McGuire was not merely non-renewed as coach for the following season. He was suspended in the middle of the 2013-2014 season, on January 4, 2014, based on what at that time were called “unnamed allegations.” As noted above, the team was 5-1 when this happened. The won just one game and lost 19 the rest of the season. In March, the school board voted to non-renew his coaching contract, which action did not affect his status as a kindergarten teacher. By the time of his first court case, the allegations that were addressed by the court were that he had benched one girl and hadn’t handed a starting position to Brooke Bowlin, and he challenged the non-renewal on the basis that these parental complaints were not valid grounds for the dismissal. 

The court found that the school district was within its rights to non-renew McGuire for any reason whatsoever, whether they were true, false or whatever.

But, it had been clear enough to McGuire for some time that there was more to the “unnamed allegations” than what had in fact been named. 

Early on, according to a Woodbury parent, the other girls were called into an interview, one by one, with a representative of the school administration. Did coach McGuire swear?, they were asked. Had he touched them inappropriately? Did he flirt with the girls? Well, at least one girl said, well, of course he swears. Every coach swears. But, did he touch anyone inappropriately? Did he flirt? The parent was pretty sure that everybody said, No way, because, well, no way. The idea that they would even ask such questions was shocking, or stupid, or both.

Based on this line of questioning, however, it became clear that the Bowlins and the Danielson and the Szondys had accused him of inappropriate touching and flirting and other inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature. The Bowlins and Danielsons filed “maltreatment-of-minors” complaints against McGuire with the state Department of Education. I am not aware that the precise nature of these complaints is public and I have not seen or heard what was claimed. But, I do know that the Department was legally bound to investigate, and it found no evidence that either girl had been “maltreated.” 

That did not slow down Hurricane Julie Bowlin, however. Later, she told other parents that McGuire had been put in jail and that he had also been involved in the theft of funds.

Sometime during all of this, McGuire’s house was pelted by eggs, an attack that traumatized McGuire’s young children, according to a Woodbury parent. The Danielson and Szondy daughters were identified by Woodbury police as the perpetrators. A Woodbury parent thought they were arrested.

The Bowlins have been remarkably “vindictive” toward McGuire, totally out of proportion to McGuire’s alleged offense, the Woodbury parent concluded, but they were “a weird family” from the beginning. Perhaps this egging incident helps understand why McGuire has been as “vindictive” in return as he has been, said the parent, assuming that a defamation lawsuit is “vindicative.” “Justice” might, of course, be another word for it.

I should add that in addition to being suspended in January 2014 and then non-renewed in March, McGuire’s career may have been further damaged. A Woodbury parent told me that he understood that McGuire was a finalist for the Stillwater girls head coaching job in the spring of 2014. Actually, he said that McGuire was as good as hired, though I cannot vouch for that. Gerard Coury had left to coach the Park Center boys. But, the Woodbury administration gave the Stillwater people a “no comment” when they called to ask about McGuire’s non-renewal, and this scared the Stillwater folks away from McGuire.

Stillwater, of course, hired a coach other than McGuire. The irony of the whole situation is that one of Stillwater’s current assistants, former Stillwater boys coach and former AD Sherm Danielson, is the father of Chelon Danielson and the grandfather of Aaliyah Danielson, who helped the Bowlins to torment Nathan McGuire as he got swept up in Hurricane Julie. A giant coincidence? I am not aware of any wrongdoing by Danielson or anyone else at Stillwater. 

Commentary

So, to clarify, McGuire first sued the school district to try to get his job back. The fact is that he was fired—OK, non-renewed—because he pissed off the Bowlins. All that stuff about inappropriate touching was obviously BS. If the school district had believed for a moment that the charges of sexual impropriety had any validity whatsoever, then they would be guilty of gross malfeasance in allowing McGuire to continue to teach kindergartners, which is, however, what they did. So, they knew that those charges were false, and yet they gave aid and comfort to the lying liars and threw Nathan McGuire under the bus. 

As a Woodbury parent said, “He got screwed, because of the way (the school district) handled it.”

Now, sure, the Bowlins were “vindictive” and told vicious lies about a good man. So, yeah, they screwed him, too, I suppose. The harm to Nathan McGuire’s reputation originated with the lies the Bowlins told. But their impact in the community would have been mostly defused if the school district had stood by him and said that, you know, these things you’ve heard about coach McGuire? They’re lies. They’re not true. Instead, the school district did everything it could to signal that there might have been some truth to the Bowlins’ lies. Thanks a lot.

So, shame on the Woodbury school district. Just because the court said that they can fire whomever they like for any reason doesn’t make it right, doesn’t make it good. Giving aid and comfort to sociopaths cannot be good for your community.

So, then, McGuire sued the Bowlins, Szondys and Danielsons for defamation. He lost at the district and appeals court levels not on the merits of the case but because the courts found him to be a public official. The Supreme Court said, no. Just because he works for a public entity does not mean that he or any other coach is a public official. He’s got nothing to say about laws and ordinances and policing and public policy and all of the other activities that are fundamental to governing. He’s a basketball coach, for Christ sakes. And, as the court said, “Basketball is not fundamental to democracy.” (Some, of course, might argue this point.)

So, take note, you can no longer call your kid’s coach a sexual predator or a thief or a jailbird because he or she isn’t giving your kid enough minutes! And, if you do that, be aware that you are not in the right. Nobody thinks you are in the right. You are a sociopath.

But, this case also raises the question of how Brooke Bowlin became eligible to play basketball and other sports at Holy Family in 2013-2014. According to the MSHSL, student-athletes who transfer after the first day of 9^th grade have to give up a year of eligibility. Bowlin’s “transfer” from Holy Angels to Woodbury wasn’t really a transfer because she was entering 9^thgrade. But, the transfer to Holy Family a month later is a different thing. In theory, she shouldn’t have been eligible to play that year. And, in fact, she did not play until the final game of the regular season at the end of February. So, apparently, there was some delay and some discussion about her eligibility status. And, if she was transferring because she wasn't getting enough playing time, it's hard to see the MSHSL having much sympathy for that. On the other hand, if she transferred because of inappropriate touching or something like that, well....

So, in conclusion, now that McGuire’s defamation case against Hurricane Julie is again free to move forward, a decent person can only hope that he wins a large financial settlement so that other sociopaths will think twice about ripping apart an community, a school, an athletic program, a basketball team, just because your kid ain’t the queen of the hop.