Multiple Title IX Complaints Filed During Cape Tech Girls Basketball Season

PLEASANT LAKE – On a Wednesday in January, a group of parents of Cape Cod Tech girls basketball players met with the school administration in what had become an extended struggle regarding the environment created by the team’s coach.

 They sat upstairs with Cape Cod Regional Technical High School’s Superintendent Robert Sanborn and Principal William Terranova. The parents were there to present their concerns about coach Alan Harrison, who’s also Cape Tech’s athletic director.

 Downstairs, their daughters had practice in the gym. They were in the midst of what was developing into a successful season based on the results on the court. 

 During that practice, a verbal interaction between a player and Harrison allegedly occurred. The player, junior Cassidy Nicholson, went upstairs, crying, to where her mother and other parents were speaking with administration. The incident served as an in-the-moment example of the uneasy state of the team they were there discussing. At least a couple parents went downstairs to find out what had happened. It was Nicholson’s 17th birthday.

The meeting — and that simultaneous alleged incident between player and coach — was just one instance among a season-long struggle between the school and a group of players and parents who took issue with the way Harrison conducted the team. 

Multiple athletes and parents told The Chronicle that players would come home from games and practices in tears. Students and parents described a tense team environment in which players felt degraded and belittled, one in which they didn’t feel comfortable to speak freely or ask questions.

The discontent from that group began before the very first game of the year and lasted through to the playoffs. By the end of the season, three complaints under Title IX — the federal statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs that receive federal funding — concerning the girls basketball team had been filed with Cape Tech.

 “It's hard to watch the games now,” said Deyse Riker, a parent of a junior player, in a January interview. “Even when they're winning, your stomach turns — out of sadness, just out of just watching your kid come out of the locker room at halftime, and she looks like she's going to cry.”

‘The Girls Have Gone Unheard’

The strife began to brew last November, before the Crusaders had even played a single game of their 2025-26 schedule. It started, at its core, as displeasure from some players and parents that Harrison had been hired as the new coach of the team.

The Crusaders were coming off a 10-10 season that saw the program’s first-ever home playoff win. They were coached then by Nick Conti, who also coached the boys soccer team in the fall. Conti began another season in that role with the boys soccer team last year but was replaced early on. He no longer works at Cape Tech, according to Sanborn.

As a result of that departure, the school conducted a search for a new girls basketball coach in the same manner it would for any other position. The job had three applicants: Harrison, a man from Louisiana, and Samantha Aronne, the mother of Nicholson.

Harrison, Cape Tech’s athletic director for 12 years, had previously coached at the high school and collegiate level. Aronne had helped to coach the team the past two years — under Conti — in an informal capacity. Harrison received the job.

 “Mr. Harrison was chosen because he was significantly more qualified than the other applicants,” Sanborn said in a February interview.

In mid-November, Harrison notified Aronne by email that he had been appointed head coach of the team. He also offered to interview Aronne for the program’s junior varsity head coach position. Two days later, Terranova — Cape Tech’s principal — similarly wrote to Aronne to say that the school had moved forward with a different candidate for the varsity position, according to copies of emails provided to The Chronicle.

Aronne soon after declined to interview for the junior varsity job, writing in an email to school administration that she no longer felt her “values or approach align with the direction you’ve chosen for the program” following the appointment of Harrison to the head coach position.

Harrison was offered multiple opportunities to comment on this story but declined.

 “The girls really asked me to advocate for a woman as a coach,” Aronne said in a December interview, conveying that to Terranova during the process to fill the head coach role. “They've been through a lot, and they really want a woman.”

The issue with Harrison during the season that followed became, in essence, to do with his compatibility as a coach. He had a coaching style that some of the parents and players felt was aggressive, emotionally draining, dictatorial and authoritarian. 

At the same time, though, a coach is the leader of a team, so sternness, discipline and the like are natural parts of teaching and instilling improvement in sports. What’s also possible is something of a generational divide, a notion that younger people today may have different expectations of how their coaches should act than have typically been considered in the past.

 “I don't see a problem with a coach who has high standards and stands on the sideline and is yelling because he or she does not see those standards being met,” said Patrick Sundby, the father of junior player Addison Sundby, in a December interview. “What I do see is a pattern of tyrannical behavior.” 

Either way, the outcry from some at the outset, when Harrison was first hired, appeared to mostly be rooted in a desire for the team to have a woman for a coach. Later that November, Nicholson sent an email to school administration with a document that included messages from five different players expressing concern that Harrison had been named their new coach. Two of the messages — notes attributed to senior Mia Gonsalves and Addison Sundby — alleged misogyny and sexism, according to a copy provided to The Chronicle.

 “Are we being punished?” read a message attributed to junior Zanae Barrett.

 “Basketball means more to me than anything in the world and I am not letting Alan Harrison ruin my senior season,” a message attributed to Gonsalves said.

 “The decision of Alan Harrison becoming our new varsity coach has shaken up our team to say the least,” read a message attributed to Nicholson.

Sanborn said he had an approximately hour-and-a-half phone call with the individual who sent the email, plus an in-person discussion. And in a reply to Nicholson a few days later, Terranova wrote that he appreciated her taking the time to reach out and share her thoughts, according to a copy of the email provided to The Chronicle. 

Terranova said he valued what the player said and how she felt about Harrison — and also that Harrison understood and met Terranova’s expectations, especially when it came to the girls’ programs. He said he understood that she may have had interactions with Harrison that made her hesitant to play the season, and he truly hoped she’d reconsider.

 “The decision wasn’t meant to offend anyone, but rather to put someone with many years of high-level coaching experience in place to lead one of the most talented teams we’ve had at Cape Cod Tech in a long time,” Terranova wrote.

That group had decided to send those letters while meeting at one player’s house to discuss what they’d do after Harrison received the coaching nod. They talked about sitting for the season. They talked about sitting for a game. But with many players not wanting to quit, they collectively decided they’d “reach out to the administration and just give them a chance to kind of see and fix things,” Nicholson said. 

 “If you promote somebody to sergeant and move them into a platoon, and the whole platoon puts in for transfer, that would be a good indication there's a problem, right?” Patrick Sundby said.

Aronne, with a few other parents tagged in the chain, proceeded to reach out to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association in early December. Steve Dubzinski, an assistant director, replied that the MIAA had no jurisdiction over local hires or appointments, and that local challenges would have to be solved at that level.

 “The girls have gone unheard,” Aronne said.

‘These Girls Are Being Disrespected’

 By any normal measure used to gauge a sports team, the Crusaders had a great, successful season. 

The team — as coached by Harrison with assistants Katrina Andrade and Craig Andrews — finished the regular season 10-9, good for a spot in both the vocational playoffs and the Division 5 girls basketball state tournament. In the preliminary round of the state tournament, No. 34 Cape Tech brushed off a three-hour trip — and a week of no practice due to the February blizzard — with a second-half comeback to defeat No. 31 Rockport, the Crusaders’ second playoff win in two years. 

A senior night win in early February against South Shore Tech was celebratory and jovial. There were tight wins and convincing blowouts, offensive explosions and defensive shutdowns. Indeed, at any game throughout the season, it’s possible that there may not have been explicitly clear visual indicators that the Crusaders were a team in distress. But a few of the players and parents felt that they were.

 “We go to all the away games now — I never really did before,” said Hannah Gonsalves, the mother of Mia Gonsalves, in a January interview. “We don't feel safe leaving our children in that atmosphere. It's just not comfortable. We want to be there in case something big happens and we need to pull them or whatever.” 

The alleged conflicts between certain team members and Harrison — now both their head coach and athletic director — started early. In some ways, given the dissatisfaction of some with Harrison’s hiring from the beginning, the difficulties may have been foregone conclusions, bound to manifest among an already rankled group.

 In early December, an interaction between players and Harrison during a practice had school officials reviewing footage from security cameras to determine if there had been any wrongdoing. Mia Gonsalves, according to her description as well as that of Nicholson’s, had asked a question during a drill. Yelling at a close distance allegedly ensued. Gonsalves returned home crying, according to her mother Hannah, who called the school to report the interaction. 

But the school investigated the situation and determined it to be unfounded, according to Sanborn — in the sense that the interaction did not represent any sort of violation. The school informed Hannah Gonsalves, according to her description, that Harrison — based on the camera footage (which had no audio) — was not at the up-close, in-your-face distance alleged by the report of the incident.

The dissatisfaction expressed by some Cape Tech players and parents this past season wasn’t the first time questions had been raised about Harrison’s coaching style. Nearly 15 years ago, Harrison stepped down as the head coach of Dennis-Yarmouth High School’s girls basketball team during the season after parents had complained that he “was being too verbally tough on their daughters” and were concerned about the intensity of the practices, a December 2011 Wicked Local article reported.

Sanborn said that experience at Dennis-Yarmouth “came up midstream after his hiring.”

 “We became aware of it, obviously, but judging him on his time with us — I've read that newspaper article, and there's not a lot there,” Sanborn said.

Complaints of a similar nature to those at Dennis-Yarmouth seemed to also emerge at Cape Tech. Players described an alleged team environment in which the coach’s authority was emphasized and defended — strongly. 

 “He just belittles us and makes us all feel like we're just worthless,” said Addison Sundby in January.

Sundby alleged that she spoke up one time and spent the next game on the bench. It reached a point where at least some number of players allegedly did not speak with Harrison without other teammates or parents also present.

 “For a lot of us, basketball is something we love,” Sundby said. “We’ve played for a long time, and now it's just really a chore to go out there and play. And putting a smile on your face is a really hard thing to do.”

In mid-January, a group of parents had that Wednesday meeting with administration, during which a player, per multiple descriptions, came upstairs from practice crying. That meeting was a “listening session,” on the part of the school, that had been requested by those parents, according to Sanborn.

Specifically, the results of a survey, organized by Riker and disseminated to the rest of the team’s parents and players, were presented. It’s not clear if every team parent and player filled out the survey. The results contained written responses alleging various incidents and patterns, according to copies of the survey provided to The Chronicle. 

Riker said she had felt a need to step in and get involved as the situation worsened, and said she offered the survey as a neutral way of collecting and sharing the girls’ experiences. She said her issue was that Harrison was “mistreating these girls,” that he was “blatantly being disrespectful to them and deteriorating this team.”

 “They win games and they look like they're going to cry,” Riker said. “It's awful to watch. It makes my stomach turn.”

At that meeting, Riker expressed that she wasn’t there to “criticize anybody's criteria or question their ability to coach,” she told The Chronicle.

 “I'm here because these girls are being disrespected — like completely unheard, disrespected, treated poorly,” Riker said. “There's favoritism. There's team division. There's no team-building. It's playing favorites, and then it's punishing the girls who do speak up, so there's retaliation from the coach. It baffles me. This is an adult — like, yes, you're handling 16-year-old girls who are at the most vulnerable time of their life emotionally, so why make it worse?”

Not much later, some parents again met with the school. That second meeting ended after about two hours with “a plan to see what the issues were,” Sanborn said.

 “We stand by the coach, but we're not oblivious to some interactions that may or may not have occurred, and we wanted the students to be comfortable on the team, and that's why we put the plan that was put together at the second meeting to affect that,” Sanborn said.

Also after that meeting, Terranova shared drafts of two documents: a set of expectations surrounding parental participation (for inclusion in Cape Tech’s athletic handbook) and a code of conduct for athletes (for use not just by the girls basketball team but the entire school), according to a copy of the email provided to The Chronicle. 

Not every parent of every player attended those meetings. Certainly not every player sent a letter at the beginning of the season. The opposition emanated from a subset of the team’s 13 total rostered players. But even so, that opposition continued to bubble. 

 “I fully understand that parents are attempting to work in the best interests of their daughters in this case,” Sanborn said. “And coming out of the second meeting, we wanted to make them feel better about that moving forward, and we agreed upon a plan, and that plan is in place through the end of the season.”

 By the end of the season, three Title IX complaints had been filed by parents of Cape Tech players on the girls basketball team. The school could not comment on the complaints nor confirm that they had been filed. Three parents — Riker, Aronne and Jaime Sundby — told The Chronicle that they had filed a complaint.

 “The district responds to Title IX complaints in accordance with its policies,” Sanborn wrote in an email. “Cape Cod Tech has an obligation to adhere to privacy laws and to protect the confidentiality of the parties involved. Accordingly, the district will not comment on specific Title IX complaints or investigations.”

 Title IX complaints can involve sexual discrimination or harassment and are usually handled through a school’s disciplinary processes.

 A day after Aronne submitted her Title IX complaint, the Crusaders clinched a spot in the Division 5 state tournament by earning their 10th win of the year. 

 Nicholson and the other players — who had met months earlier to consider sitting out some or all of the season — had stuck out nearly the entire year. The thought of quitting the team was a near constant for many, but to that point, the players had hung on.

That playoff-clinching game in February, though, was seemingly the final straw for Aronne and Nicholson. After that game, Aronne wrote to the school that she’d be pulling Nicholson out of the program, according to a copy of the email provided to The Chronicle. 

Nicholson’s father, Ian, had played basketball at Cape Tech just like his daughter. He had even coached Nicholson when she was a freshman. He died in 2024. Basketball, then, was a family legacy for Nicholson, a connection to him. Not playing the sport had never been, prior to this season, a consideration for her. But that game had, apparently, been another night in tears due to perceived communication issues between player and coach.

 About two weeks later, the Crusaders recorded a come-from-behind upset win in the preliminary round of the playoffs — despite facing continued attrition to the roster. Against No. 2 Hopedale in the following round of the tournament, the Crusaders had just seven players — five starters and two substitutes on the bench — rather than the original 13. One of those remaining players was Mia Gonsalves, playing in what would be, as a senior, her final game for Cape Tech.

 “Basketball is her life,” her mother Hannah said. “It's her outlet. It's her way of dealing with a lot of stress. And she's loved basketball from the beginning, and I just love watching her play. And this year, the life has been sucked out of her. It's sad. All of us parents are just sad to watch this emotional roller coaster unfold on the court, which is horrible.”

For graduated players like Gonsalves, that emotional roller coaster has, with the season now over, come to a rest. It’s unclear if that will also be the case for returning players next season.