It wasn’t very long into her rookie season with the Washington Spirit before Kaiya McCullough became terrified to make a mistake.
Throughout training and scrimmages last year, McCullough said, the team’s now-former coach, Richie Burke, screamed at her, and he didn’t stop. Anything could set him off, she said, prompting him to unleash a torrent of threats, criticism and personal insults on McCullough and her teammates.
Off the field, Burke also made racially insensitive jokes and comments that McCullough, who is Black, said left her feeling “very uncomfortable.”
“I was 100 percent in a situation where I was being emotionally abused by Richie,” McCullough said in an interview.