The University of Louisville announced the dismissal of head lacrosse coach Kellie Young on Monday.

The firing comes 12 days after Courier Journal reported that Young was accused of negligence in a lawsuit filed by a former player, Madeline Beck, in August 2016 and more than four years after Courier Journal reported accusations against Young for abusive tactics with players.

Young, who took over at Louisville in 2006, was fired after at least 15 players transferred or left the program over the past eight months, including six in recent weeks. Nine players departed after the spring season, including All-ACC goalie Brittany Read and second-team All-ACC midfielder Meghan Siverson.

“We wish Kellie the best moving forward," said Vince Tyra, Louisville's interim athletics director, in a release. “We will forever be appreciative for the effort that she put forth to start the University of Louisville lacrosse program from scratch."

In the lawsuit, Beck alleges she was hospitalized after lacrosse staff forced her to overwork herself during a conditioning activity and athletics personnel failed to provide satisfactory medical care.

Young declined to comment on the lawsuit’s allegations, citing a pending legal issue, but told Courier Journal her reaction was "mixed frustration and sadness."

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Young’s attorney in the suit, Craig Dilger, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on Young’s termination Monday.

Beck’s attorney said no settlement in the lawsuit had been reached as of Monday afternoon.

After the recent wave of departures, Louisville's roster was down to 20 players, a low number for lacrosse teams.

The transfer number was high: Just 2.2 percent of Division I women's lacrosse players transfer per year on average, according to the NCAA. The nine transfers after this past season constituted a third of the Cards' roster.

Of the 14 players who transferred, only two responded to repeated requests for interviews, saying no comment. Parents for each of the nine players who left this spring also declined to comment.

Former assistant coach Ginny Capicchioni, who spent last season with Louisville but left in the spring, did not respond to multiple messages.

When senior Madison Hoover left the team last week, her mother, Patti, said her daughter "just couldn't take it anymore." Hoover posted on Facebook that her daughter "couldn't support the drama, lies and abuse."

Hoover said her daughter met in August with Young and two of Louisville's top women's sports administrators, associate athletics director Christine Herring and assistant athletics director Amy Calabrese, with the goal of explaining why she thought players were leaving the program.

"We’re the kind of people who give people the benefit of the doubt," Patti Hoover said. "We said, 'Hey, we’re going to give it a shot.' ... Nothing changed."

In an interview in October, Young suggested some of the players' parents pushed their children to transfer.

"You'd have to ask them (why they transferred)," Young said. "We had a great season. We remember getting feedback from our kids that they were grateful, appreciative. They wrote me little notes.

"... It’s hard on our staff because we care about our kids. ... A couple of the kids I had multiple conversations over the summer with, ‘I’m committed to Louisville, I get it, this is what I want to do.’ Out of nowhere, they’d drop. ‘Well, I’m not committed.’ That’s the quote I got a lot."

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The departures came four years after Courier Journal reported several parents and players' concerns about what they described as Young's abusive coaching tactics, including making a player with a torn anterior cruciate ligament do 250 push-ups with her teammates as punishment in an airport terminal.

The injured player allegedly forced to do push-ups, Darby Dudley, was among the players who spoke out against Young in 2013. She said in a recent interview that Young “instills a craziness and fear” in players.

“It is specifically her behavior that drives these girls away,” Dudley said. “I’m not sure how girls are getting fooled into coming there.”

Another complaint stemmed from Young leaving a player in Syracuse after a game, an incident Young later said was a mistake. The player sought out her father in the parking lot after a halftime and post-game tirade from Young, but when the player left her dad to get on the team bus, it was gone.

"I don’t believe what I was doing was wrong by holding our kids to a standard and expecting excellence on the field," Young said in October.

Asked if Louisville's athletics administration took any action or imposed any discipline on her after the 2013 article, Young said Louisville's administrators were "filled in on everything" but no disciplinary action was necessary.

"I don’t know how much course-correcting we needed to do," Young said. "You don’t want me to be intense? OK, we’re not going to be as good. You don’t want me to hold you to a standard? That’s OK, so we haven’t done that. And now, I second-guess everything I do. Our captains have said that, 'Kell, we need you to coach us.' I say, 'Really? Because if I coach you, if I hold you to a standard, if I ask you to be what you came here to be, and you’re having a bad day, you’re going to struggle.'"

Young confirmed an incident that occurred a year ago, when some older players demanded underclassmen send them their school identification numbers. Students can make on-campus purchases with the ID numbers without needing physical IDs.

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"We have some things that we’re managing with the university," Young said in October. "Kids have done silly things and we’ve addressed it over and over again, but we’ve addressed it to them. … In some ways that is hazing, so I will have to address that with my administration."

Christine Webbert’s daughter, Casey, joined Louisville as a freshman in 2014 alongside Madison Hoover. Casey Webbert transferred from Louisville before the 2015 lacrosse season began, her mother said, because of Young’s “manipulation.”

Christine Webbert said Young made players repeatedly write all the things they did wrong in journals and that the coach regularly punished players as a group for the mistake of an individual.

“We knew what Kellie Young was like," Christine Webbert said. “As soon as we told friends that Casey was recruited to Louisville, everyone was like, 'Look at these articles!' My fault was thinking, 'It won’t happen to my daughter because my daughter is coachable. She follows rules.' I made the assumption that these girls might have been misbehaving, that they were acting out."

Six of the 13 players in Casey Webbert’s recruiting class left Louisville’s program before completing their eligibility.

Christine Webbert said some players were afraid they would lose their scholarships if they transferred to another program.

"Either you were drinking Kellie’s Kool-Aid and you didn’t see it or you were in the other group," Christine Webbert said. "There was no middle."