A former Radford University baseball player has dropped the school’s athletic director from a lawsuit that claims he and his teammates were subjected to mental and verbal abuse from their coach.
In a motion filed this week in Roanoke’s federal court, attorneys for the player — who sued anonymously under the name of John Doe — asked that Robert Lineburg be dismissed as a defendant in the case.
The lawsuit is proceeding against Karl Kuhn, who resigned from Radford last June after three seasons as the Highlanders’ head coach and is now an assistant coach at Charleston Southern University.
Court records gave no explanation for Lineburg’s removal. Rob Dean, a Roanoke attorney who filed the lawsuit, said only that a decision was made to focus solely on the actions of the former coach.
“There appears to be a pattern of behavior by Coach Kuhn, and he needs to be held accountable,” Dean said.
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The lawsuit claims that the former player was targeted by Kuhn as retaliation “for leading a group of players to complain about his season-long verbal abuse, indifference to players’ mental and physical health, and racial animus.”
Angry about the complaints, Kuhn put the redshirted player into a game late in the 2021 season solely so he would lose a year of college eligibility, the lawsuit contends.
Kuhn is asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it would be “grossly unfair” to allow the student to proceed under a pseudonym. “It is fairly obvious that plaintiff seeks to avoid criticism that may attend to a lawsuit of a player against a coach,” Kuhn’s attorney, Jim Guynn, wrote in a motion filed Tuesday.
“When it becomes apparent that Plaintiff’s claims are baseless and the Court dismisses them, there will be a record of the allegations against the Defendant while the Plaintiff walks away anonymously,” the motion states.
The lawsuit had accused Lineburg of refusing to investigate the player’s complaints about their coach. Efforts to reach Lineburg were unsuccessful after the lawsuit was filed last month.
In 2021, The Roanoke Times reported that 13 members of team complained about Kuhn to officials of the athletic department. It was only later, after Radford began an investigation after first standing by its coach, that Kuhn tendered his resignation.
According to the lawsuit, Doe was one of the players who met with athletic department officials about “issues related to mental health, mental and emotional abuse, and racial bigotry of Kuhn.”
Among other things, Kuhn is accused of assigning minority players — of which Doe was one — to lockers that were grouped together.
The lawsuit claims that Kuhn told Doe and the other minority players in August 2020 that they needed to get haircuts before the team photo was taken. The white players were not told to get haircuts, according to the lawsuit.
In September 2020, Kuhn told the players they could not attend a racial justice rally on campus, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit said other teams did attend the rally.
According to the lawsuit, Doe later learned that Kuhn referred to an Asian-American player by using a derisive ethnic nickname.
Kuhn later cut the player from the team and revoked his scholarship, the lawsuit asserts. Doe transferred from Radford to another college, but says he lost about $100,000 because his new scholarship did not match his previous one.
The lawsuit claims the player began to feel anxious and isolated over Kuhn’s conduct.
In February 2021, Doe told an assistant coach he was suffering from depression. The assistant told him to inform Kuhn. According to the lawsuit, Kuhn told the player, “If you feel like cutting your head off with a pair of scissors, let me know.”