‘These are cries for help;’ Players allege Idaho women’s volleyball coach Chris

University of Idaho coach Chris Gonzalez talks to players during a match. (Provided to SCNG)

It was the first time Chris Gonzalez left the women volleyball players he was coaching at the University of Idaho speechless.

It wouldn’t be the last time.

Gonzalez, hired only weeks earlier, was frustrated and then enraged with how a drill was proceeding in a practice in the spring of 2022, according to five people familiar with the incident. Finally, Gonzalez kicked a player out of the drill and took her place. When the drill still didn’t go as Gonzalez expected, he shoved a player over, knocking her to the ground, according to five people.

“He physically pushed a player,” said Travel Morris, an Idaho middle blocker who participated in the drill. “Like physically in a very, bullying way, he literally told her to move and then pushed her and she fell to the floor.

“He said, ‘Move!’ and just pushed her, like completely just pushed her over,” Morris said. “He pushed her quite aggressively.”

“Everybody looked confused. As soon as it happened everybody on the court looked at each other like, ‘Did he really just do that?’ We all just froze.”

The incident is part of a pattern of alleged abuse by Gonzalez, a former U.S. national team coach, outlined to the Southern California News Group by six Idaho players on the 2023 roster, three former players, and a university employee, who allege Gonzalez physically abused and bullied players, pressured injured players to play and train against the orders of the school’s sports medicine staff, regularly deprived players of food on road trips, body shamed players, made racially insensitive and inappropriate comments to players, and pressured sports medicine staff to share confidential information about players’ weight.

In interviews, letters, emails, formal complaints, confidential university documents and voice recordings of Gonzalez, athletic director Terry Gawlik, and other athletic department and university administration officials, the players allege that Gonzalez, a longtime fixture on the Southern California volleyball scene and once considered one of the college game’s rising coaching stars, has created an environment where he targets specific players for almost daily bullying and even physical abuse, where players suffered dozens of avoidable injuries from overtraining or because he ignored the instructions of doctors, trainers and a sports biomechanics expert, withheld food from the team to the point where all nine current and former players said they were constantly hungry and routinely played and practiced while feeling light-headed or dizzy, suffered tunnel vision, and often felt that they were on the verge of passing out or blacking out.

“Through many abusive behaviors, Coach Gonzales and his staff perpetuate a culture of harassment, bullying, and belittling,” a current Idaho starter wrote on behalf of her teammates…