Oregon State volleyball coach retiring after troubled tenure

Oregon State volleyball coach Mark Barnard will retire at the end of the season, closing a tenure marked by frequent roster turnover, player allegations of emotional abuse and the school's long-running lawsuit against The Associated Press to withhold records about the athletic department's response to complaints.

Barnard is 70-131 over nearly seven years as head coach, including 7-19 in the 2022 season, which ends Nov. 25. He took the Beavers to the NCAA Tournament in 2017, where they lost in the first round.

Starting in July 2020, the AP ran stories documenting more than a dozen players who had either quit or transferred from Barnard's program since he took over in 2016. Three team members said they had contemplated taking their lives during that span.

One story included allegations from players who said the coach had pitted players against each other in team meetings, threatened to revoke scholarships for struggling players and pushed team members past health warnings in practice as punishment. A follow-up story told of a player whose scholarship was shopped around not long after she thought about taking her life.

“The sooner you move on, the better,” Barnard told that player, Kyla Waters, in a conversation she recorded and provided to the AP. Waiters said when she met with the coach, her arms and wrists were scarred from a cutting habit she said she’d developed due to the stress.

Oregon State has disputed the AP reporting, saying scholarship commitments from the volleyball program have been honored and that the characterizations of pushing players past their physical limits are untrue.

Asked this week for comment about the allegations, the school referred to a short release on its website announcing Barnard's retirement.

“All of us at Oregon State thank Mark Barnard for his long-time commitment...