By Kelly Heyboer/ The Star-Ledger
UNION — Two years ago, Michele Sharp was near the top of her profession. The Kean University women’s basketball coach had just led her team — an NCAA Division 3 powerhouse — to a 15-3 season.
These days, she is far from the spotlight. The once celebrated coach works in a small cubicle, overseeing a weight room on a remote section of the Union Township campus.
In a lawsuit, Sharp says Kean officials are unfairly punishing her and making her a scapegoat for a string of misdeeds and violations that prompted the NCAA to place the school’s 13 athletic teams on probation until 2016.
“She was great at her job and she was a winner,” said Timothy McIlwain, Sharp’s attorney. “She’s done coaching because of this.”
Last month, Kean’s attorneys fired back at the former coach in legal papers claiming she was demoted for legitimate reasons and has no grounds to claim she was discriminated against.
Sharp’s lawsuit, filed in January, is one of several Kean is facing related to the NCAA investigation that found “major violations” at the school. Investigators found an ineligible player’s grades were changed, cash payments were given to some athletes on a trip to Florida and a bogus course was created for women’s basketball players taking a team trip to Spain.
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