COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Two University of Maryland athletic trainers who had attended to a football player after he contracted heatstroke at a spring practice, and who died two weeks later, are no longer employed there, a university spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
The development marks another rebuke of the university’s Board of Regents, a majority of whom had advocated retaining the trainers, according to several knowledgeable sources who spoke anonymously to describe confidential conversations and proceedings. In a chaotic series of events last week, the university president fired the head football coach in defiance of the board’s public wishes, after which the board’s chairman resigned.
An outside medical report conducted for the university and released in September found that the player, a 19-year-old offensive lineman named Jordan McNair, was not cared for appropriately after displaying symptoms of heatstroke during a practice in May. Cold-water immersion, a standard treatment, was not conducted, and it was more than an hour before 911 was dialed. He died two weeks later.
The two trainers had been on paid administrative leave since mid-August. While the university has declined to name them, they are widely known to be Wes Robinson, the head football trainer, and Steve Nordwall, an assistant athletic director and director of athletic training.
Their terminations come one week after the board advocated retaining the head football coach, D.J. Durkin, and the athletic director, Damon Evans, after a report into the football program’s culture found dysfunction but only partially blamed Durkin and Evans for it.
The board’s public show of support for Durkin was followed a day later by President Wallace D. Loh’s dramatic decision to buck the board’s wishes and use his authority over personnel at the university to fire Durkin.
Loh — who also announced, under board pressure, that he would retire in June — had initially disagreed with the board, believing that Durkin and Maryland ought to part ways, according to the sources. Also, Loh encountered widespread outrage, both on campus and nationally, the day after the announcement that Durkin would be retained.
The board’s former chairman, James T. Brady, resigned last week after Loh’s surprise firing of Durkin.
As early as two weeks ago, a majority of the board had advocated retaining the two trainers, sources said.
The trainers were placed on leave in August shortly after ESPN published an article describing a “toxic” culture at the program. Around the same time, Loh, who according to the sources had by that point seen a preliminary draft of the medical report, accepted “legal and moral responsibility” for McNair’s death on behalf of the university and started a second investigation that culminated in last month’s report into the football program’s culture.
Also in August, the university and Rick Court, the football program’s strength and conditioning coach, reached an agreement to part ways, after Court was identified in the ESPN article as the ringleader of a culture of bullying and humiliation that is widely deemed to belong to an older, retrograde vision of football.
On Tuesday, the Terrapins, who are 5-4 under the interim head coach Matt Canada (who is also the offensive coordinator), tried to put the past several days’ events behind them as they prepared for Saturday’s game at Indiana (5-4).
“A week ago, we were sitting here, and then suddenly there were different events,” Canada said.
But, he added: “Right now, we’re focused on Indiana.”
Maryland players elected not to make any members of the team available to the media after Saturday’s game, a home loss to Michigan State. Tuesday marked the first time current players publicly addressed the press since last week’s developments.
“There’s obviously been a lot of noise outside of the walls of the football house,” said Jesse Aniebonam, a defensive lineman. “To me and to a lot of the other guys, it’s been a normal week — we’re all trying to shift our focus to the right things.”
Aniebonam, a redshirt senior, added: “I’ve gone through a ton of changes. Not only stuff like this. I’ve had head coaches leave midseason before. I’ve gone through at least five, six position coaches; three, four defensive coordinators. These things happen.”
Indeed, should Maryland hire a new head coach this off-season, he would be the program’s fifth head coach, including interims, in five seasons. Randy Edsall was fired as head coach midway through the 2015 season, as the Terps have struggled to keep up on the gridiron with rivals in the Big Ten, the football-centric conference it joined before the 2014 season, and particularly its brutal East Division, which contains stalwarts like Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State.
Maryland would need to win all of its final three games — at Indiana, versus No. 8 Ohio State and at No. 21 Penn State — to have its first ever winning season in conference play.
“We’re just trying to get six wins, seven wins, maybe eight wins,” said running back Ty Johnson, a senior. “Get to a bowl game, get another one.”
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