Jam On It founder and basketball coach Matt Williams under investigation for sexual misconduct with ex-player

Matt Williams, founder of local youth basketball program Jam On It, is on administrative leave from his leadership post at a national organization overseeing youth sports pending an investigation into allegations he had a sexual relationship with a former player.

The Amateur Athletic Union investigation comes after a string of public social media posts that started in January by Ashlee Orndorff, one of the best high school basketball players to come out of Northern Nevada.

Orndorff, now 35, accused Williams of having a sexual relationship with her when he coached her as a teenager nearly two decades ago.

Update: Investigation clears Jam On It founder Matt Williams of sexual allegations

Williams, 48, is the second vice president of AAU, a nonprofit sports organization that oversees more than 34 amateur sports with more than 500,000 participants nationally, including the Jam On It program. His four-year term expires in October.

"In light of recent allegations, the AAU national officer met with Matt Williams, AAU officer, event operator and leader in youth sports," wrote Roger Goudy, president of the 130-year-old AAU, in an email to the organization's leaders.

"As a result, Mr. Williams has volunteered to be on administrative leave until the review process has been completed."

Williams, who was a star basketball player for Nevada from 1987-91, is considered a pioneer in modernizing youth basketball tournaments by bringing events all under one roof. Thousands of children from Northern Nevada have played in his program.

In an interview with the RGJ on Feb. 2, Williams denied the allegation he had a sexual relationship with Orndorff while she was still in high school.

He said they did have a consensual relationship after she went to college. In 2002, Williams and Orndorff had a child, who was put up for adoption.

“I believe in the AAU system and I’m voluntarily stepping down," Williams said in the interview. "They can do whatever investigation they want to."

The AAU published a policy online in 2012 that prohibited sexual relationships between coaches and athletes, saying "an imbalance of power is always assumed between a coach and an athlete."

It's unknown whether such a policy existed when Orndorff played for Jam On It. Officials for AAU didn't return calls or emails to answer that question.

In December, Williams stepped down from his post with Jam On It before the allegations were made public because tumors were discovered in his head, throat and pancreas. The pancreatic tumor is malignant, he said in an interview with the RGJ.

Williams said he is relieved to publicly respond to Orndorff's statements.

"I was disappointed in the accusations," Williams said. "I felt I was not going to deny my daughter. I’m a family man and if people are going to judge me for having an affair, that’s what they can judge me for."

Allegations made public

Orndorff made her allegations against Williams public in January when she shared a series of Facebook posts using the hashtag #metoo. Me Too is a national movement in which women have shared stories of sexual harassment and abuse they've experienced.

In the posts and interviews with the RGJ, Orndorff alleged she was in high school when she had a sexual relationship with Williams, who was then her coach. She started playing with Jam On It in 1998 at age 15.

She alleged her relationship with Williams continued for years.

"This relationship, this thing has ruined my life," she told the RGJ. "I don't want this to happen to anyone else."

At 6-foot-2, Orndorff was a star in Hawthorne. She was a four-time Class 3A player of the year from 1997-2000 and led Mineral County High School to three state titles.

Despite hailing from a small town, she was a top national recruit who had interest from national programs, including Connecticut, North Carolina, Duke, Stanford, Arizona and Oregon, among other schools.

When Orndorff graduated, she held the state record in career points, rebounds and blocks and single-game marks in rebounds and assists. She was a USA Today All-American honorable mention in 1999 and the Nevada Gatorade Player of the Year in 2000 before spurning larger schools to play for the Wolf Pack.

Orndorff said she stayed to play for Nevada because of her relationship with Williams.

"I had everything but was taken advantage of by this man," she said. "I was under his spell."

Orndorff left Nevada in 2001, halfway through her first year. She said she worked for Jam On It and continued to have a relationship with Williams up until she gave birth in August 2002.

A few weeks after putting her child up for adoption, she left to play basketball for the University of Portland, where she was a student from 2002 to 2005.

Orndorff now lives in Hawthorne. She said she has struggled with an opioid addiction in the years following injuries from playing sports.

In 2011, she was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance. Mineral County court records show that charge was dismissed in 2013 after she completed a drug rehabilitation program.

She said she took her allegations public now because she doesn't want what happened to her to happen to other children involved in youth sports.

"It has taken me 20 years to understand what happened to me," Orndorff told the RGJ.

Orndorff made allegations in court in 2005

Last month's social media posts were not the first time Orndorff alleged sexual misconduct against Williams.

According to court records obtained by the RGJ, Orndorff said she sent a sexual misconduct complaint about Williams to AAU in March 2005.

On March 22, 2005, Orndorff filed paperwork for a temporary restraining order in Washoe County. In her application, she said that she had filed the complaint with AAU three weeks earlier.

She alleged that Williams had left her threatening phone messages after she filed the sexual misconduct complaint, and that she feared for her safety, according to the court records.

Orndorff reiterated those concerns during a March 31, 2005 court hearing, which Williams also attended.

Washoe District Court Judge Victoria Van Meter denied Orndorff's application for the restraining order, saying at the court hearing Orndorff failed to show Williams was a threat to her safety.

"The protection order statute is not intended to prohibit behavior that might occur in the future," Van Meter said.

"What I have to do is listen to the facts and determine if there is an emergency, did something happen last night," she said. "At this time, Ms. Orndorff, I do not find legal basis to issue an order of protection against domestic violence."

Williams' attorney, John Springgate, told Van Meter during the hearing he advised Williams to avoid any contact with Orndorff.

Orndorff told the RGJ that she emailed the sexual misconduct complaint to AAU. She did not have a copy of the complaint.

She said she later retracted the complaint.

Officials for AAU didn't answer RGJ questions about receiving a complaint in 2005.

Watch: Who is Matt Williams

Williams denies allegations

Williams responded to Orndorff's accusations on Facebook, posting his own statement Jan. 19 on Jam On It's Facebook page.

In his post, which has since been deleted, he said he had an extramarital affair with Orndorff that led to a child. He said their relationship did not begin until he was no longer her coach.

A screenshot of Matt Williams' statement on allegations made by Ashlee Orndorff. The statement was later deleted from the Jam On It Facebook page in February 2018.

Williams told the RGJ that their sexual relationship started after Orndorff left the Nevada basketball program in the middle of her freshman season in 2001. Orndorff would have been 18 and Williams was 31.

Williams said their "sexual relationship was on and off for a period of time."

“We were always close," Williams told the RGJ. "Looking back now, there are a thousand things I wish could have done differently. I wasn’t in a good place in my life and I had an affair with someone I cared about.”

Williams apologized for having an affair.

"People know me. I’m from here. I made a mistake. I’m very sorry for Ashlee."

Williams has held some of the world's largest AAU tournaments in Reno, putting more than 45 courts inside the Reno-Sparks Convention Center for tournaments that trumpeted economic impacts in excess of $4 million.

According to the organization's website, Williams founded Jam On It in 1991 with basketball camps and clinics and grew the business with year-round tournaments, private lessons, consulting and traveling teams.

In 2015, the nonprofit organization earned annual revenues of about $2 million, according to annual tax filings.

Jam On It has sent dozens of players to the college level. The most famous player to come out of the program is Williams' daughter, Gabby Williams. The Reed High graduate and college All-American plays for No. 1-ranked Connecticut and is considered a top prospect in this year's WNBA draft.

AAU's investigation and its history of sexual misconduct allegations

Rachel D'Orazio, director of marketing for AAU, said in an email to the RGJ on Jan. 24 the organization had just become aware of the allegations against Williams and is gathering information.

"We will get back to you once our review is concluded," D'Orazio said.

Reno attorney Kent Robison was hired by AAU to represent Williams.

Through Robison on Thursday afternoon the AAU said in a statement, "The AAU has commenced an investigation of the allegations in accordance with its administrative and disciplinary procedures."

AAU published online a "youth protection handbook" in December 2012, which detailed the organization's sexual abuse policies — especially when there is an "imbalance of power" between player and coach.

"Sexual interaction or intimacies between a coach and an athlete or other participant are prohibited regardless of age, both during coaching and during that period following coaching when the imbalance in power could jeopardize effective decision-making," the AAU's policy states.

The AAU bills itself as the largest non-profit sports organization in the United States. It was founded in 1888 to create standards for amateur athletics, such as working with athletes to prepare for the Olympics.

Today, the organization sanctions more than 34 sports programs like Jam On It's basketball program.

This isn't the first time that the AAU's top leadership has faced allegations of sexual misconduct from a former player.

AAU's former president and chief executive officer Robert "Bobby" Dodd was accused of molesting two former basketball players he coached in the 1980s, according to an ESPN "Outside the Lines" investigation in 2011.

After Dodd lost his job at the AAU, the players later decided not to file a formal criminal complaint against their former coach.

Coaches from other organizations affiliated with AAU have been accused of sex abuse allegations involving teenagers.

That includes well-known Chicago-area volleyball coach Rick Butler. Butler was accused of sexual abuse of three teen players in the 1980s. USA Volley banned Butler "forever" while the AAU has not commented on the matter, the Chicago Sun-Times reported in January.

Bryant Newmuis, a track coach in Baltimore, was convicted in 2008 of sexually abusing a 15-year-old player.

Years later, that player sued the AAU because the abuse happened while he prepared for an AAU-sanctioned event, the Associated Press reported.

A federal appeals case later ruled AAU was not liable for the coach's actions.

Siobhan McAndrew can be reached at smcandrew@rgj.com and Chris Murray can be reached at cmurray@rgj.com.

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