Sixteen years ago, members of the University of Tennessee women's volleyball team gathered for a last meeting with their head coach, Julie Hermann. In gym shorts or jeans, some piled onto a black leather couch. Others sat on the floor, cross-legged, almost breathless.

Many of them remember Hermann standing over them, as she had at hundreds of practices and matches. For several minutes, as the players recall, she said nothing.

The players say everyone, including the athletic director, had been brought together by a letter all 15 players on the team had submitted. In it, the players said, their coach had ruled through humiliation, fear and emotional abuse.

"The mental cruelty that we as a team have suffered is unbearable," the players wrote. Specifically, they said the coach had called them "whores, alcoholics and learning disabled."

In blunt terms, the players wrote, "It has been unanimously decided that this is an irreconcilable issue."

Hermann, the players say, absorbed the words, turned to her team, and said simply: "I choose not to coach you guys."

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At that, say the players, she turned and left the room. Her coaching days were over, and many players say they never saw her again, though she briefly moved into athletic administration on the Knoxville campus.

Then, 11 days ago, Hermann, assistant to the Louisville athletic director for 16 years, was introduced as the new athletic director for Rutgers. The appointment quickly spawned a Facebook conversation among at least 17 of Hermann's former Tennessee players, now spread across the country, with young families and careers, bonded by what many of them say is trauma and an anger they still have not shed. The group includes women who played for Hermann over five of the six years she coached at Tennessee.

Allison Stricklin Harvey, who says she quit the Lady Vols because of Hermann, and then returned after Hermann was no longer coach, said she hoped the years had changed Hermann. "I like to think she has evolved," she said.

Julie Hermann, second from right, hired as Rutgers athletic director in May, was a bridesmaid at the 1995 wedding of Ginger Hineline, second from left.

But when she saw her former coach's face in recent news reports, Stricklin Harvey said her well-wishing melted away.

"It just put a pit in my stomach," she said.

Her former coach is portrayed now by Rutgers president Robert Barchi as the person to lead the university out of troubled times. Following the stormy departure of basketball coach Mike Rice, amid revelations he had physically and verbally abused his players, and the resignation of athletic director Tim Pernetti, Hermann was depicted as a healer and visionary by Barchi and other school officials.

Barchi called her someone who shares a "commitment to the university's core values, a deep concern for our student-athletes."

During three interviews over the past nine days, Hermann said she viewed the Rice saga as a cautionary tale as she prepares to take over at a school poised to go into the big-money, high-stakes Big Ten Conference.

"In my opinion, that can't go one inch forward until we have healed from the inside out," said Hermann, who will be paid $450,000 annually. She added, "All of us need to buy into, 'Here's what we stand for.' And if we don't stand for that, you can't stay. No one can stay."

Two of her former bosses extolled her as a leader.

"How excited I am for Julie Hermann and excited for Rutgers," said Joan Cronan, the former athletic director at Tennessee. She called Hermann "one of the most outstanding administrators in the country."

Louisville's athletic director Tom Jurich said that in 17 years of working with Hermann, first at Northern Arizona where she was a first-time head coach, then at Louisville, "I've never seen anything but impeccable behavior."

"I knew things didn't end well," he said, "but that happens to a lot of coaches at a lot of places."

Hermann appeared at her news conference already looking at home with a scarlet "R" on her lapel. At that time, none of the Tennessee players' allegations were publicly known. But she was questioned about a 1997 jury verdict that awarded $150,000 to a former assistant coach who said Hermann fired her because she became pregnant. Hermann, she said, felt a baby would interfere with job performance. Hermann says the assistant was fired because she was underperforming, and it had nothing to do with pregnancy.

In an interview nine days ago, Richard Edwards, Rutgers' vice president of academic affairs and the co-chair of the search committee, said that on orders from Barchi, the school had investigated the lawsuit through university lawyers. A statement released by Rutgers on Friday night said: "We have looked at the totality of Julie's record in athletics administration and we look forward to her continued success as she leads Rutgers' transition into the Big Ten."

Rutgers introduces Julie Hermann as new AD 12 Gallery: Rutgers introduces Julie Hermann as new AD

Hermann says she is mystified by the reaction of her former players, including several, she said, who had stayed in touch with her over the years.

She said she did not remember the letter by her volleyball players. When the letter -- given to The Star-Ledger by one of the women -- was read to her by phone on Wednesday, she replied, "Wow."

Eleven of the former Tennessee Lady Vols, in interviews and e-mail agreed to go on the record, while expressing fears their former coach could somehow reach into their lives once again and retaliate. One, citing similar concerns, did not want her name used.

Among the group, six were part of the 1996 team whose scathing letter, they said, was written in the spring semester of 1997. Others played for Hermann as early as 1992.

Their accounts depict a coach who thought nothing of demeaning them, who would ridicule and laugh at them over their weight and their performances, sometimes forcing players to do 100 sideline pushups during games, who punished them after losses by making them wear their workout clothes inside out in public or not allowing them to shower or eat, and who pitted them against one another, cutting down particular players with the whole team watching, and through gossip.

Several women said playing for Hermann had driven them into depression and counseling, and that her conduct had sullied the experience of playing Division 1 volleyball.

Asked about the players' lingering grievances, Hermann reacted sharply and said she was flabbergasted.

"I never heard any of this, never name-calling them or anything like that whatsoever."

The word "whore," she said, is "not part of my vernacular. Not then, not now, not ever."

"None of this is familiar to me," she said.

GROWING UP PHYSICAL

These should be high-flying days for Hermann, who is 49. She said she became enraptured by sports at an early age. She grew up in Nebraska City, Neb., on the west end of a town known for being the home of Arbor Day and not much else. She and an older brother, Jody, are adopted. Just about everyone in town came of age with an ethic that demanded hard work, or as Hermann put it, "You just grow up physical in Nebraska."

On her grandfather's farm, where he raised cattle and pigs, and grew corn and soybeans, she baled hay and swung a giant machete to hull the beans. Her father, Eugene, worked 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Woerner Oil, the gas station he owned, and raced home to grab a sandwich before heading back to work at a liquor store he also owned. Once the school day was over, she said, she was either moving oil or booze.

The biggest lure for her was a field owned by her parents next to their home on First Street. Along with Jody, Hermann played football and baseball there. She was stricken to learn later on that when girls got to a certain age, they had to switch to softball. She first realized her passion for athletics made her different from most of her female classmates when she walked onstage to received a pendant for her abilities at sports.

By the time she reached Nebraska City High School, she was already 5-10 and was sought after as a hitter in volleyball and a center in basketball. (She is now 6 feet.) With her penetrating blue eyes, she also developed a reputation as a leader, a rare school-age player who by her presence and style of play made her teammates better.

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"She was always in a situation where she would give 150 percent," said Lu Arkfeld, who was an assistant volleyball coach for the high school team. "Julie could get along with everyone. They admired her ability. People around her wanted her to do well."

The one thing her father did for himself was buy a Windjammer motorcycle, and he would be on it every Sunday morning. He had green eyes and strawberry blond hair, and riding his bike, with his hair flying back, he looked for all the world like James Dean, his daughter remembers. He liked to ride fast.

He went to watch her play in a state tournament during her junior year of high school. He left on his motorcycle, ahead of his daughter riding on the team bus, but he died after he crashed on his motorcycle on the way home. Hermann was met at the door of her house with the news.

"He was 6-2, but in my mind, he was 6-7," she said.

Hermann became a star volleyball player at the University of Nebraska, and soon after graduating took her first coaching job as an assistant at the University of Wyoming. It was there she met Ginger Hineline, one of the team's best players.

A DREAM JOB

Hermann calls herself an "expert at transition," and it is easy to see why. Along the way, she was an assistant volleyball coach at the University of Georgia, the head coach at Northern Arizona University, and then in 1991, she came to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville to take charge of the Lady Vols.

In many ways this was a dream job in a place seen as on the vanguard of women's collegiate sports. At the time, it was one of the few schools in the country with a separate women's sports department. At Tennessee, Hermann brought in Hineline as the assistant coach.

Hermann says for their first few years working together, Hineline performed well. This changed, said Hermann, not long after Hineline became engaged to David, an economics graduate student at Tennessee, and as a June 4, 1994, wedding date approached. Hineline, she said, was obsessed with having a baby, so much so that it distracted her from her duties with the team.

"It's nonstop conversation about her and David, their sex life, they're gonna have babies right away," Hermann said in an interview. "We're like, 'Yep, yep, gotcha.'"

Remarks Hermann made at the wedding were caught on tape by the wedding videographer and would become central to the discrimination lawsuit against the university in 1997 that ended with the jury siding with Hineline.

When asked about the video during her introductory news conference at Rutgers on May 15, Hermann said, "There's a video? I'm sorry, did you say there's a video? There's no video, trust me."

In an interview with The Star-Ledger at a restaurant in Cincinnati, where she lives, Hineline, now 45, said Hermann was a bridesmaid at her wedding. She provided the newspaper with a photograph showing Hermann standing next to her along with two other bridesmaids, in matching black dresses, black chokers and pearl earrings. Hineline also provided her wedding video, which includes Hermann in light wedding-day banter about the baby prospects.



Hermann, she said, was moved elsewhere in the department as an "assistant in development" for six months before she left the school to be an assistant coach for the U.S. national women's volleyball team and wound up in Louisville the next fall.

Separated now from their experience at Tennessee by decades, many of the onetime college players said they had struggled with the decision to write the letter, fearful their scholarships would be revoked. They extended the wish now that their allegations would not harm Hermann as she prepares for her new position. Lynn Lovingier, who played for Hermann in 1995-96, said she hoped Hermann had learned from her experiences. But, she added, "We have yet to be acknowledged or apologized to by Julie."

Courtney Huettemann Goebel was one of several players who said she was struggling to forgive Herman. She remembered the coach directing them to flip their workout clothes inside out at a restaurant as punishment after a lopsided loss to powerhouse Kentucky in 1996. "She wanted to embarrass us," said Huettemann Goebel, "because she said we were an embarrassment to the university."

Searching for a lesson to take away from her Tennessee experience, Mindy Britten Stone, who works as a middle school coach, said that Hermann had taught her "what not to do." Stone says she focuses on "how to empathize and keep the sport fun" for her students.

Other players, including Tiffany Hamilton and Amy Buchanan, said Hermann sometimes crossed a line and became physical while coaching. They said she would typically yank players by their jerseys as she made lineup changes.

Buchanan, who played for Hermann in 1994, wrote in an e-mail that once, in a huddle after the first set of a match, the coach glared at her. "She looked at me and said, 'What about you Buchanan? Are you going to lose the whole match for us?' And she followed that up with a backhand to my gut."

"How ironic," said Kelly Hanlon Dow, a sophomore on the 1996 team, "that Rutgers had an abusive coach and they're bringing in someone who was an abusive coach."

Hermann said she barely recognizes herself in the players' accounts of their time with her. In the interview nine days ago, she talked about her coaching philosophy, saying that if she were ever to write a book, she would call it: "Ripple Effect."

"What are we putting out?" she said. "What's the message people are receiving? Generally, most of us have no idea of our ripple effect, good or bad. For me, I like to stay focused on what that is and making certain that I'm modeling what you most want out there."

Upon learning that the women she coached, and also her assistant, Ginger Hineline, were still embittered, Hermann said she wanted to rise above any acrimony.

"From Ginger to these players, these are people I cared about and still care about," she said on Wednesday. "I just don't feel it's my job to guess their motivations. Like I said, it's the first I've ever heard of it. I'm going to try to focus on leading Rutgers into the Big Ten, and that's all I know to do."

She is scheduled to start her new job on June 17.

Mike Vorkunov contributed to this report.