GREENSBORO - In his day-long testimony Tuesday, former Duke head football coach Fred Goldsmith described his treatment of former placekicker Heather Sue Mercer as a special opportunity given to a persistent young woman with a lot of "spunk"-but not a lot of talent.
"[Mercer] did as poor of a job as anybody I'd seen really attempt a kick on a college field in my recollection," said Goldsmith, who used the direct examination from Duke attorneys to deny many of Mercer's allegations. "The kicks were very weak. Her leg was very weak. Her trajectory was very low. It was a quite poor performance."
Although Goldsmith testified that Mercer, Trinity '98, did not have the athletic talent to kick at the college level, he said he allowed her to be a part of the team as a manager for the kickers because he admired her effort.
But in the spring of 1996, he said, he decided it was time to "treat her like a man" and kick her off the team. "Based on what I'd seen of her, there was no contribution she could make to our football team...," Goldsmith testified. "I felt she would not fit in as [one of] the top three.... I felt at that time it was time to sever the relationship."
Goldsmith said that what Mercer has characterized as discrimination was actually to her benefit. If Mercer had been a man, he said, he would likely have never given her the opportunity to kick with the team at all. But Goldsmith had trouble recalling some of the details of his interactions with Mercer. He said he did not remember asking the player why she was interested in football instead of beauty pageants. He recalled commenting on her good looks, but said he was just responding to questions from the media. "[I said to reporters,] 'No, she doesn't look like a football player. She's a pretty girl that looks like Molly Ringwald,'" Goldsmith said, adding that it was a compliment.
Although Mercer has alleged that Goldsmith had ordered an equipment manager not to issue her equipment, Goldsmith argued that, at the time, he was too busy to think about such matters.
"What Heather Sue Mercer was wearing was the most farthest thing from my mind that I could be concerned with at that time in my life," he said.
Also, he denied that at a fall 1994 tryout he or assistant football coach Fred Chatham had laughed at Mercer, who has described the tryout as a joke. In her testimony last week, Mercer argued that Goldsmith and Chatham made a mockery of her private tryout by failing to place the ball appropriately and hardly watching her kick. "No, I most certainly did not [make fun of her]," he testified. "We may have laughed at my snapping, but I would have thought it was entirely inappropriate to laugh at a student."
But during the cross examination, Mercer's attorney, Melinda Lawrence, fired off a series of questions highlighting potential contradictions in the coach's statements.
In his testimony, Goldsmith said Mercer's poor kicking ability-in addition to a then-new National College Athletic Association rule limiting the number of pre-season players to 105-led him to bar Mercer from attending summer football practice in 1995-a decision that Mercer alleges was the start of the discriminatory behavior. But Lawrence pointed out that in his April 1998 deposition, Goldsmith had only cited the NCAA rule change as a reason for keeping her out.
Earlier Tuesday, Goldsmith testified that 100 players attended pre-season practice that year, but that he had expected to fill the 105 limit. At the last minute, he realized that he would fall short. Although he did contact potential freshman walk-on players trying to fill the remaining five slots, he did not get in touch with Mercer, who had been named a member of the team that spring.
Lawrence also cited an Aug. 25, 1995 press release entitled, "Mercer Not on Active Roster." Goldsmith said Tuesday there is no such thing as an active or inactive roster in college football. And although he was quoted as saying Mercer would take on "pretty much" the same role as she had in the previous season-as a student manager-Goldsmith immediately responded that those were not his words. "Sometimes these releases were made on a very general basis but I wasn't available for all these releases," he said. "I do not remember, but my intent was for Heather Sue to kick out there."
Goldsmith talked Tuesday about how distracting the media had been and said several times that Mercer never wanted any undeserved attention. He said the media first learned of Mercer's potential place on the team from a caller on a radio show, who was a member of a group of fans with whom Goldsmith met every Thursday to discuss the football program. This information was not supposed to be divulged, Goldsmith said.
Lawrence tried to contradict Goldsmith's recollection by entering into evidence an Oct. 2, 1994 press release from Duke's Sports Information Office that quoted Goldsmith as saying, "She did try out with us this morning. She's not where she needs to be to kick at this level of football at this point. Her heart is in it if she wants to see what she can do."
Lawrence said the press release was issued on a Monday, calling into question whether Goldsmith had told the Quarterback Club of Mercer's tryout before it took place, or whether he had released the information to the media himself.
In fall 1997, Goldsmith said, Mercer showed up at winter conditioning and was told by the coach that because she was no longer a member of the team, she did not have a place there. But Goldsmith admitted in the cross-examination that any walk-on who wants to try out for the team is encouraged to attend winter conditioning. In an effort to prove Goldsmith did not base his decisions on first-hand knowledge, Lawrence also repeatedly asked Goldsmith about the extent of his knowledge on Mercer's athletic and kicking abilities
The trial will reconvene at the federal courthouse in Greensboro this morning at 9:30 a.m.
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