The transgression? The Rutgers softball team had gone $6 over its food travel budget during a stop at a Cracker Barrel in early March 2019.

The punishment? According to multiple players, at their next practice, a group of team members were told to run six, 100-yard wind sprints — one for every dollar over — and each in less than 17 seconds, until some of them were left crying, collapsed or doubled over in exhaustion.

First-year head coach Kristen Butler directed the March 12 sprints from the field, players said. If they didn’t make the time, they would have to start over. By the fifth sprint, Erin Collins, a 20-year-old sophomore outfielder, began to feel dizzy. She feared if she spoke up, though, Butler would make the team run more.

Trembling and woozy, Collins tried to keep up, she said, until she blacked out.

“I just remember my eyes opening, like, ‘What happened?’” Collins said during an Oct. 18 interview in Knoxville, near the campus of the University of Tennessee, where she transferred this fall.

Even as she laid on the field, Collins said, tended to by an athletic trainer, the punishment didn’t stop. Her teammates just kept running and running. At some point, another player also collapsed and had to receive care from the trainer, Collins and other players said.

The episode was one of numerous troubling incidents in a program ruled by fear, intimidation and abuse, Collins and six former Rutgers players and five parents told NJ Advance Media.

Butler, 35, had been hired from the University of Toledo in June 2018 to revive one of the university’s worst athletic teams, bringing along her husband Marcus Smith as a volunteer assistant coach. According to documents obtained by NJ Advance Media, Smith, 41, was investigated and cleared of inappropriate conduct when he was head softball coach at Owens Community College in Ohio from 2014 to 2016. Rutgers officials said all coaches, volunteer or otherwise, undergo background checks.

Under Butler and Smith, players claimed they lived in constant fear of being banished from the team or having their scholarships revoked despite NCAA regulations intended to protect against such retribution. The players claim they endured dangerous conditioning sessions that regularly left them in distress, while being subjected to wide-ranging physical and emotional abuse.

“People just didn’t feel safe on the team,” Collins said.

Players and parents said the culture under Butler and Smith was so volatile it prompted 10 players to leave the team within a year of the new staff taking over — an exodus that amounted to 58 percent of the players eligible to return in 2020. None of Rutgers’ 22 other sports program saw even remotely the same percentage of turnover.

The former Rutgers players and their parents also claimed senior Rutgers athletic officials, including athletics director Patrick Hobbs and deputy director of athletics Sarah Baumgartner, failed to adequately address the alleged abuse even after numerous players and parents complained.

The allegations against Butler and Smith, based on interviews with former Rutgers players, parents of former players and legal documents obtained by NJ Advance Media, include:

Seven players said the team was regularly punished for menial transgressions with conditioning drills that veered into abuse. Two players said Butler would even physically push players in the back to make them run faster in drills.

Six players said they were physically abused at practice, including one drill in which they were intentionally hit by pitches thrown by assistant coach Brandon Duncan. During another drill, Butler hit rapid-fire ground balls at a player, striking her with the ball and leaving her scratched from diving, multiple players said.

Five players said Smith invaded their privacy by confiscating their phones and viewing their screens without permission, and made numerous inappropriate comments. In one alleged incident, he boarded the team’s bus and told the women it smelled like “period blood.”

Seven players said Butler attempted to run out players she didn’t think were good enough from the previous coaching regime. She also possibly violated an NCAA rule when she attempted to revoke the scholarship of sophomore infielder Myah Moy and another player who ended up transferring, the two players said.

The alleged abuse was disclosed by seven former Rutgers players and five parents, some of whom asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. Collins and seven anonymous Rutgers players also made the same accusations in a 23-page legal notice prepared by Milwaukee-based attorney Martin Greenberg on behalf of Collins. The legal notice, sent to Hobbs and Baumgartner July 16 and obtained by NJ Advance Media, also accused the coaches of shaming athletes deemed overweight. Collins is seeking damages from Rutgers for lost tuition after she decided to transfer.

After NJ Advance Media contacted Rutgers Tuesday with questions about the allegations, Hobbs called one of the reporters working on the story and launched into a profanity-laced tirade that ended with him saying “You guys are f------ scum. Why should I help you people?” Hobbs sent the reporter a text message an hour later to “apologize for my words.” He then added, “This narrative around RU being a place where abuse is tolerated is bull----. But it gets clicks.”

In a more detailed response Wednesday, Hobbs, Baumgartner and Butler categorically denied all the allegations lobbed against the coaches and the athletics department. Butler said none of the team’s conditioning sessions were abusive and that she never punished the team with conditioning. She pointed to university protocols that permit her to reevaluate a player’s scholarship but said the characterization of revoking scholarships is inaccurate. She also admitted no wrongdoing on behalf of her husband.

Butler cited the team’s 2019 performance, in which Rutgers finished sixth in the 14-team Big Ten, as evidence her training methods were effective. “The results speak for themselves,” Butler said.

Meanwhile, Hobbs and Baumgartner said the legal notice was forwarded to the school’s office of general counsel, but would not comment further, citing potential litigation.

Hobbs said in the statement, “I do not tolerate abusive behavior and Rutgers University does not tolerate abusive behavior. Rutgers University is a national leader in how such claims are addressed.”

(Read the full Rutgers Athletics response here)

The allegations mark the third time in six years that Rutgers coaches have been accused of abusive tactics, following Mike Rice (men’s basketball) in 2013 and Petra Martin (swimming) in 2017. Both coaches were fired after media reports surfaced detailing the alleged abuse, and Rutgers paid them more than $1.2 million combined in settlement and buyout money.

The accusations also come at a time when experts say scrutiny of athlete abuse in college sports has skyrocketed following the 2018 death of University of Maryland offensive lineman Jordan McNair, who collapsed after a grueling preseason football workout.

“You would think that after Mike Rice — who really opened the eyes of the world to abuse in college athletics — that this particular school would have better procedures and protections and would be watching this more closely than any school,” said Greenberg, who also represented a swimmer in pending litigation against Rutgers and Martin in 2017. “But the school doesn’t do anything about it. They seem to sweep it under the carpet because it isn’t important to them.”

Former Rutgers softball player Erin Collins during interviews in Knoxville, Tenn.Michael Patrick | For NJ Advance Media

‘A proven program builder’

When Hobbs announced the school was hiring Butler in June 2018, it was hailed as momentous day for Rutgers softball. A former Southeastern Conference player of the year at college powerhouse Florida, Butler also starred in pro leagues as a power-hitting slugger. She landed her first head coaching job at Toledo in 2014 and led the team on its best four-year stretch in two decades.

“Kristen is a proven program builder,” Hobbs said in a statement at the time, awarding her with a four-year contract worth $105,000 plus incentives in 2019-20. “But what most impresses me are the countless reports of best-in-class student-athlete experience under her guidance.” A year after the new appointment, Rutgers also announced $1.5 million in upgrades for the softball and baseball programs.

The Rutgers softball program certainly needed revamping: Its facilities were some of the most outdated in the Big Ten, and the team had sputtered to an 86-121 record since 2014 under previous head coach Jay Nelson. Players said they were eager and excited to play for Butler, who, they added, warned them in summer 2018 that big change was coming.

Yet the seven former Rutgers players all said they were stunned by the intensity of Butler’s drills. Players routinely threw up, fell to their knees or cried during the workouts, and some had to push others from behind to try to make the times, they said.

All seven players interviewed by NJ Advance Media, a group that represented nearly half the players eligible to return to the team for the 2020 season, said the conditioning crossed the line of normal hard work expected of Division 1 athletes.

“I am an athlete that knows how to be tough and knows being a championship team takes grit and sacrifice,” said one anonymous player in the legal notice. “That being said, the things we endured this season made us miserable. There is a fine line between making us stronger mentally and physically and pushing us to breaking points.”

During a September 2018 session, one player collapsed from exhaustion, according to the player, her father and teammates. Butler rushed over to berate the player, they said.

“Butler was standing over top of her screaming at the top of her lungs to get up,” said the parent, who asked to remain anonymous because he feared retribution against his daughter, who is no longer on the team.

During another workout in fall 2018, Butler led a session where the entire team had to jump rope for a minute without any miscues, players said. If someone messed up, the timer started over. Collins and other players said the team jumped rope for over an hour without any break for water. When the team finally completed the drill, they moved directly into a full practice, Collins said.

“This was one of the first incidents where it was like, ‘Something’s not right here,’” Collins said.

The workouts were so demoralizing and arduous, one player said, she considered intentionally injuring herself while running stadium steps during the fall inside the Rutgers Athletic Center. She said it was the only way to stop the extreme conditioning, since players who collapsed typically were yanked up by coaches or teammates and told to keep going.

“I have never felt like that in my life,” the player told NJ Advance Media. “I debated just falling down and hitting a glass ledge just to be able to stop. It got to that point.”

Butler denied all allegations of abusive conditioning and said any sessions were “well in line with Division I standards.” She also added “the workouts were aligned with those that I participated in myself as a student-athlete.”

Also in fall 2018, Butler cut a walk-on player who had earned a scholarship from the previous staff, the player said. She also started pressuring some on formal scholarship to leave the program, players and parents said — a possible violation of an NCAA rule.

In late 2018, another disturbing incident rattled the program, players said. The team was told to perform a “trust fall” exercise where, players said, they stood on a folding table and fell backward into the arms of teammates. Butler and other coaches demanded a player who had recently undergone knee surgery participate, players said.

The player started “shaking uncontrollably,” according to one teammate in the legal notice.

“That is when I heard Marcus Smith say to her, ‘Get up there and do the fall or I will push you,’” the same player said in the document.

The player ultimately completed the exercise, but teammates said she was traumatized.

She became the fourth person to leave the program in late 2018.

The softball field at Rutgers.Keith Sargeant | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

‘So many horrible things’

Smith, like his wife, was an athlete before becoming a coach. He played college football at Division 3 Wisconsin-Stevens Point, according to an online bio. He started coaching football at his alma mater, and in 2006, he landed his first softball job at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, his bio said.

When Butler was hired by Toledo in 2014, Smith also began a two-year stint as head coach at nearby Owens Community College, where he steered the team to a pair of conference titles and a region championship. After Butler was hired at Rutgers in 2018, Smith appears to have joined her staff immediately, according to the Rutgers athletics website. (Wife-husband coaching tandems are rare, but not unheard of in college athletics; Meredith Civico, current head coach of the Rutgers field hockey team, works with her husband, Joey Civico, also a volunteer assistant coach.)

Smith’s presence introduced a new set of concerns. For months, Rutgers players said they heard him utter inappropriate comments. One player told NJ Advance Media she heard him tell a Native American support staffer applying sunscreen, “I didn’t know people like you got sunburns.” Two players in the legal notice and one parent said he made a comment about trying to guess every player’s sexual orientation.

Many players were deeply disturbed during a road trip in the spring when he climbed onto the team bus and, according to Moy, “told us it smelled like period blood.” Players said it was one of many inappropriate comments Smith made throughout the season.

Butler denied the comment was ever made on behalf of Smith, who, through a Rutgers spokesman, “vehemently denied the assertion he repeatedly made inappropriate comments.”

Smith did not return a phone message left Tuesday from NJ Advance Media seeking comment. Butler said Smith left the team at the end of the 2019 season, calling it a family decision.

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Also in the spring, players said, Smith enforced a team rule by confiscating cellphones at night on road trips. Moy said she saw Smith scrolling through her phone one day. Other players said they noticed they handed in their phones turned off, only to find them on when they got them back in the morning. Even if their phones were locked, a parent said, Smith would look through notifications that popped up on their home screens.

Players complained about it to the Rutgers compliance office, though when Butler found out, players said, she accused them of lying about Smith looking through their phones.

Butler denied any student athlete’s privacy was violated.

As it turned out, these were not the first complaints of misconduct lodged against Smith.

In March 2016, when he was in his second season as head coach at Owens, Smith was suspended while the school investigated complaints of the coach’s conduct, according to records obtained by NJ Advance Media through an Ohio Open Records Law request.

According to the records, the allegations against Smith included at least 14 claims of inappropriate behavior, including wondering aloud if a player was a lesbian, intimidating players, revealing medical information about players and telling them “I do not need to respect you.”

“He certainly bullied a lot of girls,” said Misti Burtscher, the mother of an outfielder who played for Smith at Owens. “He’s just done so many horrible things to these girls.”

Bridgette Piccirilli Braun, another parent of a former Owens player, said Smith “treated these young girls like trash.”

According to internal school emails, the school investigated Smith and determined “the complaints, with few exceptions, do not involve the sorts of alleged behavior that rise to the level of a policy violation or otherwise concern practices which are clearly wrong.”

Owens athletic director J.D. Ettore did not return phone messages and emails from NJ Advance Media seeking comment.

Burtscher and Piccirilli Braun disagreed with the school’s findings, saying both of their daughters stopped playing softball after Smith made the game miserable for them.

“My daughter was coming home crying all the time,” Piccirilli Braun said. “It really ruined everything for her.”

Smith appears to have been reinstated before the end of the 2015-16 season, but the following year the Owens softball program folded.

Rutgers claimed all coaches undergo background checks, and the school said it was aware Smith was investigated and cleared at Owens.

Rutgers also noted, “he was later honored as conference coach of the year.”

There is no record of Smith earning any money from Rutgers in its 2018 university payroll database. Still, Smith was listed as a volunteer coach on the Rutgers athletics website during the 2018-19 season, with a nine-paragraph bio and a glossy picture of him in a jacket and tie.

Players said he was a constant presence in the dugout and at practices, and that he traveled with the team on nearly every road trip, often with the couple’s two young children in tow.

‘Fall out of love with softball’

The 2019 Rutgers softball season began in February, but practices didn’t get any easier, six former Rutgers players said. During one, players said, Butler hit grounders at an infielder so quickly the player was repeatedly hit by a ball and scratched from diving to the ground. The team also was forced to do a drill where they were told to let inside pitches thrown by Duncan, an assistant coach, hit them. If they didn’t, they were punished with conditioning, several players said.

Rutgers officials didn’t make Duncan available to be interviewed. Butler called allegations players were intentionally hit with softballs “categorically false” and denied all claims of physical abuse.

Moy, who tore a knee ligament during a game in the spring, said Smith and other coaches demanded she let pitches hit her injured knee during the drill.

“I got punished a couple of times and I got hit,” Moy said. “I got in trouble for moving out of the way because I didn’t want my knee to get hit.’’

“It was really scary because if you were late or you forgot a sock, you were going to cause conditioning for your whole team,” added one player who spoke to NJ Advance Media. “It caused a lot of girls to fall out of love with softball.”

Collins and several teammates said she passed out from exhaustion during the March 12 session. Within the same week, Sue Collins, Erin’s mother, contacted Baumgartner with concerns, Sue Collins said.

Sue Collins said she was assured by Baumgartner the school would take the complaints seriously.

About two months later, Sue Collins said, Baumgartner told her flatly, “We’re keeping Butler and the rest of the coaching staff.”

For her part, Moy charged that Butler violated Big Ten rules and tried to strip her scholarship.

Despite a torn ACL that would require surgery in June, Moy played in 21 games over the final two months of the season — increasing her batting average 54 points and turning in a 3-for-4, three RBI performance in a pivotal win over Michigan State. Butler called her in for a meeting on May 20, and, according to Moy, “she just flat-out said, ‘We don’t want you back anymore.’”

Moy said that Butler instructed her to leave the room “to go sign the transfer papers.” She declined, but Rutgers’ office of financial aid issued Moy a letter two days later saying her scholarship was cancelled, according to the document obtained by NJ Advance Media.

Another scholarship player said Butler did the same with her, citing a list of complaints in their exit meeting and presenting the player with transfer papers to sign.

Butler and the university said no single coach has the authority to revoke scholarships.

“Scholarships may be reevaluated for a number of reasons, including, but not limited to, when student-athletes engage in serious misconduct,” Butler said.

In January 2015, months after the Big Ten announced a commitment to scholarship protections, Power-5 Conferences adopted an NCAA rule that prohibited reducing or not renewing scholarship aid based on a student’s “performance or contribution to a team’s success; an injury, illness or physical or mental medical condition; or any other athletics reason.”

Tim Nevius, a former NCAA investigator who serves as the executive director of the College Athlete Advocacy Initiative, said Rutgers’ actions appeared to contradict the Big Ten’s 2014 proclamation that an athlete’s scholarship “will neither be reduced nor cancelled provided he or she remains a member in good standing with the community, the university and the athletics department.”

“They say these are four-year, guaranteed scholarships, but the fact is coaches and schools find ways to get out of their commitments,” Nevius said. “It’s particularly troubling when an athlete is injured because the legislation is intended to protect against a scholarship termination as a result of injury.”

Chad Hawley, an associate commissioner for Big Ten policy, declined to comment on allegations Butler attempted to revoke player scholarships without cause.

An appeal hearing was scheduled for June, where Moy argued she had done nothing to merit having her scholarship revoked.

Tom Stephens, chair of the university’s student-athlete advisory committee, emailed Moy one day later, informing her the panel voted to uphold her appeal and reinstate her aid if she stayed at Rutgers.

Moy opted to stay, ensuring she keeps her scholarship money. But she was cut from the team.

Erin Collins said she had a similar appeal hearing before the Rutgers financial aid committee after she decided to quit the team in May rather than play for Butler. During the hearing, she outlined abuse allegations against Butler, who also was on the call.

According to a recording of the hearing obtained by NJ Advance Media, Butler expressed shock over the complaints raised by Collins.

“I can say nothing but positive things about Erin Collins,” Butler said.

The coach went on to defend her coaching style and admitted no wrongdoing.

“There wasn’t anything that Sarah (Baumgartner) brought to my attention that would be something that we need to drastically change,” Butler said. “Being pushed to your limits in conditioning, I mean, that’s being an athlete.”

Collins’s appeal to have her financial aid reinstated was denied.

Former Rutgers player Myah Moy rounds the bases in 2019.Photo courtesy of Myah Moy

‘Nothing was going to change’

The Scarlet Knights ended the 2019 softball season with a 29-26 record, their first winning mark since 2015. They also qualified for postseason play for the first time since 1996. The players, however, said that those improvements came at a cost that was far too great.

“Looking at our stats and photos from all our success this season, you would think we loved every second of it,” one player wrote in the legal notice obtained by NJ Advance Media. “What you don’t see is the anxiety attacks, stress from being behind in school and frustration of being controlled constantly.”

With today's 4-0 loss to Marshall in the @WomensNISC , the 2019 #RUSB season has officially come to a close.



Thank you all for the support during a fun and successful season. We have a feeling this is just the start of more great things to come.



Box: https://t.co/xCtSTvW4Gl pic.twitter.com/71q88Qqc67 — Rutgers Softball (@RUSoftball) May 17, 2019

Four Rutgers players entered the NCAA transfer portal between October 2018 and January 2019, before the season started. Three others, including Collins, filed transfer paperwork on consecutive days after the season ended in May. An eighth player entered the portal in July, and two more players left the program but remain enrolled as students at Rutgers, bringing the total of defections to 10.

The eight names submitted to the transfer portal since October 2018 makes for the highest total of any school in the 14-team Big Ten Conference, and twice as many as the next two highest schools.

Butler said turnover is “typical during a coaching transition.”

Moy is still on campus and has her scholarship, but she has no support from Rutgers athletics.

She doesn’t know if she’ll ever play softball again.

The same goes for Erin Collins, an outfielder who started 45 games in 2019. She was expected to log even more time next season, but she decided to transfer and quit softball. Collins said she was particularly disturbed that Baumgartner did not appear to take any action to stop the alleged abuse in the program.

“I realized that nothing was going to change,” Collins said. “If my assistant athletic director wasn’t going to be on my side and help the players out, then I didn’t see change happening.”

Now at the University of Tennessee, Collins is seeking damages from Rutgers to cover more than $100,000 in tuition as a result of lost scholarships and medical bills related to her participation in the softball program.

Greenberg, the attorney, said Rutgers never produced a formal response to the 23-page legal notice he sent to the school in July. He is calling for the firing of Butler and anyone “complicit in or actively covering up of the alleged mistreatment of student-athletes.”

Meanwhile, Butler is wrapping up fall workouts in preparation for the 2020 season, which begins in February. Only three starting position players remain from last year’s team.

NJ Advance Media research editor Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.

Matthew Stanmyre may be reached at mstanmyre@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattStanmyre. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Keith Sargeant may be reached at ksargeant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @KSargeantNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.