Mom must pay coach $50,000 for defamation in dispute over daughter’s playing time
“I was told I could never coach in the district again. This lady that was in my district for two months basically destroyed everything.”
Nearly nine years after leading a campaign of lies to get her daughter’s basketball coach fired, a Minnesota mother has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle the coach’s defamation lawsuit.
Julie Bowlin, 55, also signed documents Monday admitting she made numerous false accusations against Nathan McGuire, leading to his 2014 dismissal as a coach at a high school in Woodbury, near St. Paul.
The settlement comes three years after the Minnesota Supreme Court revived the lawsuit, finding that a parent’s criticism of a high school coach is not protected by the First Amendment because a coach is not a public figure.
“It feels good to close this chapter,” McGuire, 47, said in an interview Monday at the Washington County Courthouse in Stillwater. “Hopefully, some of what we’ve done here will create some safeguards for other coaches because it went to the Supreme Court.”
The daughter, who was a ninth-grader when the dispute began, graduated this year from college.
McGuire first coached the girl, Brooke, when she was a seventh-grader. After he got a job at Woodbury High School, she enrolled there as a freshman, though it was more than a half-hour’s drive from her home.
In late November 2013, a week into the season, Julie Bowlin became angry when she learned McGuire had Brooke scrimmaging with junior varsity rather than varsity players, according to a letter she signed as part of the legal settlement.
Over the next two weeks, as Bowlin sought varsity playing time for her daughter, she met with various school officials and falsely claimed McGuire had been fired from his last job.
She even spoke with an attorney about suing McGuire before finally pulling Brooke from Woodbury and enrolling her at a Minneapolis Catholic school on Dec. 9, 16 days after the scrimmage.
Still, Bowlin continued to try to get McGuire fired.
She, along with other players’ mothers who were unhappy with McGuire’s coaching decisions, convened a January 2014 meeting with school district officials. Bowlin accused McGuire of “bullying, pushing, manipulation, harassment, aggression and other forms of maltreatment” against numerous players, according to the signed letter.
South Washington County Schools suspended McGuire from coaching and hired a law firm to investigate.
A week later, Bowlin filed a student maltreatment report with the Minnesota Department of Education and urged other mothers to do the same.
“It just never stopped with this lady,” McGuire said. “Nothing was good enough. And she was getting her way after pulling her kid; she already had me suspended.”
Bowlin admitted in the signed letter that “all of these allegations were false,” and both the district and state investigations cleared McGuire of any wrongdoing.
Yet, in March 2014, the school district declined to renew McGuire’s coaching contract, though he was retained as a teacher.
That summer, Bowlin acknowledged as part of her settlement, she continued to lie about the coach, including telling a parent that McGuire “was recently put in jail” for mistreating players.
McGuire filed the defamation lawsuit in federal court in 2014 and included South Washington County Schools as a defendant. The case moved to state court in 2015 after a federal judge dismissed the counts against the school district, finding that McGuire’s year-to-year coaching contract gave the district wide latitude in whether to keep him in that position.
McGuire said he applied for roughly 50 basketball coaching jobs and heard back on maybe five. He had a successful run coaching girls basketball at Minneapolis South High School but he wanted to return to the South Washington district, where he was still a teacher. A coach at another public high school in Woodbury said he wanted to hire McGuire as his assistant but the district refused.
“I was told I could never coach in the district again,” McGuire said. “This lady that was in my district for two months basically destroyed everything.”
The two sides were scheduled for trial Monday morning when the settlement was reached.
McGuire’s attorney, Don Mark, said he had a long list of coaches and former players lined up to testify in McGuire’s favor.
Mark said that through a life insurance policy, Bowlin must pay McGuire a total of $50,000 with a series of $300 payments. If she fails to pay on time or otherwise violates the settlement agreement, that judgment becomes $350,000, Mark said.
“Perhaps the most significant part is actually getting the truth out after all these years,” he said.
Bowlin’s attorney, Tim O’Brien, declined to discuss the case at the courthouse Monday morning and did not respond to another request for comment.
At her new high school, Brooke Bowlin played varsity basketball as well as softball, and she went on to play softball at St. Cloud State University.
Next up for McGuire is getting one of his old South Washington County Schools coaching jobs back.
“We’re hoping with this letter, with this settlement,” he said, “that maybe I can work again with the youth in the district that I teach.”