Ousted tennis coach fires back

Josh Moore believes his tenure as Southeast Missouri State's women's tennis coach would not have ended after just one season had he towed the company line.

Moore thinks the hammer fell on him because he not only filed formal complaints against Southeast director of athletics Mark Alnutt and senior associate director of athletics Cindy Gannon but also because he contested the accuracy of his year-end evaluation.

"It's 100 percent because I stood up for myself. There's no doubt in my mind," Moore said. "Certain things are more important than a job. If I was a good employee who didn't raise issues about the way I was treated, I'd still be employed here."

Southeast issued a short press release Wednesday stating that Moore's contract will not be renewed for the 2013-14 academic year.

"We have decided not to renew the contract of Josh Moore," Alnutt said in the release. "I want to thank Josh for his service to Southeast Missouri State University and wish him well in any future endeavors."

Moore said he filed the formal complaints with the university's human resources department against Alnutt and Gannon in recent days.

Moore said the complaint against Gannon was for "verbal abuse. Berating me, basically telling me how stupid I was, how we hired you to manage a program and you're horrible at what you do."

According to Moore, the specific verbal abuse he detailed took place on April 7. He said he did not file the complaint at that time because "I was hoping it would be able to be worked out."

Moore said the complaint against Alnutt was for "work place retaliation. I can't go into too many details. ... Just the way he treated me after I turned in the response to the evaluation. He definitely has been aggressive and vindictive, trying to intimidate me."

Moore said his end-of-season evaluation -- a routine process performed with coaches of every Southeast sport -- was done on May 22 and he turned in his response to the evaluation on June 4.

"I took issue with how they made me look in my evaluation," Moore said. "There were a ton of things. It wasn't accurate at all. The biggest thing, it made me out to look like somebody who didn't care about the team.

"They said I didn't feed them [the players] right, I told dirty jokes, I didn't know how to coach. Basically that I didn't treat them right, that I didn't care about the student-athlete."

Added Moore: "If they want to say I didn't coach well. ... they can say what they want. But it's definitely a big issue when they represent somebody's character like that. Once I turned in my response to it, that I wouldn't agree to their version of events, the treatment got worse as far as Mark Alnutt was concerned."

Moore said a big issue he had with Southeast administrators during the season was "forcing me to keep a player who was abusive to myself and the players. They said I used inappropriate ultimatums with players, basically me telling them if they're not going to try hard and are abusive to me and other players, they're not going to be on the team any more."

Moore said he ultimately was able to dismiss the player in question -- he declined to name her -- but only after considerable resistance from the administration.

"They told me [when he was hired] If I needed to get rid of everybody on the team, I could, and yet when we had somebody who was a major problem to the team, they wouldn't let it happen," he said.

Moore said what's most disappointing to him is that he feels certain his players are behind him.

"I definitely had the support of the players," he said. "I've already talked to them, let them know about the situation."

Moore felt confident that he would eventually be able to turn around a program that has struggled for years and last qualified for the Ohio Valley Conference tournament in 2007.

The 2013 Redhawks, hampered by injuries, went 4-11 overall and 1-9 in the OVC during Moore's lone season. He had already signed several promising players for next year.

"I'm disappointed to say the least. It just didn't work out," said Moore, who started the women's tennis program at Division II Texas A&M Kingsville before taking over at Southeast for Mark Elliott, whose contract was not renewed in April of 2012 after six seasons.

Moore said he was not really surprised by Wednesday's announcement.

"I knew I had a target on my back the way they were treating me. I didn't know how it would be handled," he said.

Wednesday's press release said a national search for Moore's replacement will begin immediately.

Alnutt, through a Southeast spokesperson, declined further comment other than what was in the university press release.