About to bite into a slice of pepperoni pizza, sophomore Denisa Zobeideh removed the pepperoni. That's all it took for Dawna Prevette, head coach of the Penn State women's tennis team, to suspend her for the next tournament, Zobeideh's father said.
It was an "unsubstantial reason" for being suspended, Zobeideh's father, Adeeb, said.
This is one account of bizarre actions taken by Prevette, leaving her players disgusted and confused about their future.
Lauren Holzberg, a former member of the Penn State women's tennis team, said Prevette verbally abuses her players.
Another player, Monika Mical, said Prevette misled her about Penn State when she came to Poland to recruit her.
Holzberg said she was kicked off the team "because of a lack of eye contact."
Players on the women's tennis team have accused Prevette of threatening to take away their scholarships, verbally abusing them in team meetings and breaking down avenues of communication with the team.
"When you're on a team and you're bullied and harassed and you're stressed out," said Holzberg, who was kicked off the team in the fall, "it affects your social aspects and your classes and everything. That's where the problem comes in. I think people are more depressed and then get stressed out about everything and then the sheer fact that you're harassed and bullied.
"It's just, you know, there's no person to tell, really."
Throughout the last year, two of Prevette's No.1-seeded players, Holzberg and Mical, have left or been dismissed from the team.
A third, Maria Prishlyak, asked for her release from the team in the fall, Prevette confirmed Monday.
Prevette, in her second year as head coach of the Nittany Lions, said Monday she demands her players to work hard and issues like these "happen with new coaches all the time."
"If they don't want to work hard and be competitive and fight and improve, then maybe this isn't the place for them," said Prevette, who denied the story about Zobeideh's suspension before asking a Collegian reporter to leave her office.
But players feel like they've been belittled by their coach and ignored by the administration. Multiple athletics and university officials declined, deferred or could not be reached for comment, including Penn State Associate Athletic Director Sue Delaney-Scheetz and Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon.
Prishlyak said she had a meeting with Prevette on Wednesday and said she was told not to tell anybody about the meeting.
" 'The best thing you can do is leave and not come back next year,' " Prishlyak said Prevette told her.
"I feel she targets you if she wants to get you to leave," senior Dorothy Dohanics said.
"I feel with Maria she has been targeting her because she wants to get her to leave," she said.
Lynley Wasson dreaded going to practice from Day 1.
She would check The Weather Channel, hoping it was going to rain, so she wouldn't have to be subjected to the harsh ridicule she says she was forced to endure.
Wasson was one of the most highly touted tennis recruits in the nation coming out of high school in 2005, ranked No. 1 in the Southwest Section of the United States in singles and doubles.
Wasson chose University of North Texas, where Prevette coached from 2000 to 2006, after visiting multiple teams.
Her mother, Melly, said Lynley had offers from schools all around the country, but wanted to stay close to home.
"She was so nice before she signed -- Dawna was just a sweetheart," Melly Wasson said Wednesday. "And then afterwards, after Lynley was there for a week, she knew she made a terrible mistake."
The decision took a toll on her -- Lynley often was emotionally distraught because of the actions of Prevette, she said.
"I cried all the time, so much," Lynley said Wednesday. "I guess the fact that I was a freshman and I didn't want to stick up to her and I regret that so much. I cried so much on the court. A few of us she'd yell at between points, 'Do this,' 'Do that,' she yelled at us.
"When we would lose, she would scream and yell at us. We just hated going to practice. We all hated it."
Melly said players on the team referred to Prevette's office as "The Chamber of Horror."
Throughout the year, Melly said she and her husband smuggled food to Lynley so she could eat before a match.
She said Prevette had the team keep a food diary, so Lynley's parents would sneak food to her and have her eat it in a restroom.
"It was terrible for us," Melly said. "I left there heartbroken the last time we left. I cried when we left there because I knew she was so unhappy. We felt helpless because what could we do?"
Lynley eventually left the program, transferring for a time to a local community college.
She couldn't have lasted the whole four years, her parents say, but some past players don't understand her problems with Prevette.
"I'm not quite sure why Lynley didn't have a positive relationship with Dawna," said Megan Schmulbach, who played under Prevette at North Texas.
"I honestly don't know the extent of why Lynley had a negative encounter with Dawna Prevette. I don't feel like Lynley did it very professional and I feel like being homesick was also a part of why she had a negative experience at North Texas," she said.
Lynley moved on to play tennis at the University of Houston.
She said she had a successful career, but she won't forget her time with Prevette.
"She ruined my freshman year of college tennis," Lynley said. "I never hated tennis before. I loved it. But when I went there, I hated tennis. The way she treated us was awful.
"I feel bad, I don't want to say bad things about her, but she's someone who should not be coaching any women's tennis team."
When Michael Prishlyak traveled to Penn State in September, he didn't see the same woman who had promised to take care of his sister.
Prevette traveled to Ukraine last year to visit with the Prishlyaks and meet Maria.
Maria had been training to play tennis for her entire life, Maria's brother said.
"She told us, she's going to be like a mother, " Michael said in a telephone interview from Ukraine on Tuesday. "She said she likes Maria very much. She loves her, et cetera. We liked the woman basically, she was very nice."
Now, however, Michael said he may "insist" Maria leave Penn State because of the way Prevette has treated her.
Maria came 4,810 miles from Ukraine to Penn State.
Maria traveled so far because she wanted to attend a respected university and continue her tennis career.
"She's alone in the United States, she has no family there," Michael said. "She has nobody there to help her."
After Michael and his mother left Penn State, he said the coach continued her strange behavior.
"[Maria] started to tell us the coach is not such a nice woman," Michael said. " 'She is screaming at us. She treats us in an unnormal way.' "
Michael said he feels helpless being so far away from his sister. And for a girl who has played tennis since before she can remember, her situation at Penn State has her considering ending her tennis career, he said.
"She said, 'Listen, I cannot play because of the coach, because of the training and because of the exercises,' " Michael said. "I don't think this is OK. Dawna had problems with the team and I very doubt her as a good coach, because she's supposed to take care of them and she doesn't. What she said to them when they started again was, 'If you go against me you're gonna find out how bad I can be.' This is threatening."
Holzberg is now off the team -- and she's a lot happier because of it. She misses playing Big Ten tennis, but she doesn't miss the crying.
"The athletic department basically hired a bully but won't admit it," Holzberg said. "She likes the control that she has over people."
This fall, Holzberg said she was kicked off the team for making "a lack of eye contact" with Prevette.
This was the only reason she was given for being removed from the team despite being the No. 1 player coming into this season, she said.
The year before, Prevette had pressured her to leave the university, she said.
"I have the talent and I'm one of the smartest players on the court," Holzberg said in February. "I can read players, I know where balls are going and I know how to get to balls and where to play shots."
Prevette declined to comment on Holzberg's ability when asked in a sit-down interview in February. It would be "unprofessional" to comment on the dismissal, she said.
Holzberg said she and her parents met with Prevette and Delaney-Scheetz to discuss her situation in May 2008.
Prevette gave her a contract containing a list of things to abide by to stay on the team -- such as having to visit Counseling and Psychological Services. Holzberg said she followed the details of the contract but was still removed.
"I was more scared of her than my actual opponent," Holzberg said Sunday in an interview.
"I literally was more scared of what the coach was going to do, say and how she was going to react than my opponent. I never once had positive reinforcement from her, anything good said about me," she said.
Coming into this season, Dohanics was elected captain, and thus responsible for going to Delaney-Scheetz with any problems the team had.
Now, Dohanics is annoyed with how her collegiate career ended.
"Maybe Sue Scheetz knows, maybe she doesn't," Dohanics said. "I just feel like it's more her fault than Dawna's. Sue Scheetz does not want to be accountable for making a bad hiring decision."
Dohanics said she was part of a three-player committee who helped interview coaching candidates via conference call after former coach Buffy Baker resigned in July 2007.
While Dohanics said the team didn't have a bad feeling about the hiring, Prevette was not the top choice. Prevette's whole interview was about winning, she said, while the other candidates spoke more about the players.
"This is the thing with Dawna, she can put on a great front. She can act so nice, but she's very fake," Dohanics said.
"That's all she talked about. She never said anything about like relationships with players, she didn't talk about that at all," she said.
A week or two after the candidate interviews, Delaney-Scheetz called her and said Prevette was hired, Dohanics said.
Dohanics that she wasn't even sure if the administration considered the players' feedback in the decision.
Athletic Director Tim Curley said Wednesday he had not heard any allegations from the players and hadn't met with any of the players since Holzberg in the fall.
Curley referred further comment to Delaney-Scheetz, who was out of the office this week in California.
Since the hiring, Dohanics and other players have gone to Delaney-Scheetz with issues regarding the way Prevette treats them, but the coach's conduct hasn't changed, she said.
"Technically speaking, they don't want to hear anything," Holzberg said. "You could say all this stuff, but to them it doesn't mean anything."
The players are constantly guessing what Prevette's next move will be, Dohanics said.
The senior said an outsider could see Prevette feeding balls to the team at practice, yet she still does not have the skills of a coach.
The players accuse Prevette of being a poor communicator -- and a poor coach.
Dohanics said that Prevette sometimes did not tell the players who would be playing until they were warming up for the match. She said the team had no idea who was in and who was out because the lineup randomly changed.
"I feel like sometimes she just doesn't have a plan and it's just a free-for-all," Dohanics said.
When the travel roster was decided for the Big Ten Tournament, Mical, who played No. 1 and No. 2 singles this season, was left off.
In an interview after the decision, Mical said that she was not given a reason as to why she was not participating.
She could only guess that her transferring next year meant Prevette would want to use someone else.
The players were not given a reason for her absence -- they were simply told Mical wasn't going to travel, Dohanics said.
Prevette said Monday the decision was up to her and she will "travel" who is going to compete hard for the team.
She also said Mical not being on the team next year was not the reason for her absence on the Big Ten roster.
In a similar situation, last season's assistant coach Helena Besovic was fired after the season's end.
Dohanics said Prevette never told the players their assistant coach wasn't returning.
She said Prevette never sent out e-mail and never told them about their new assistant coach, Evan Clark.
The Nittany Lions have a .288 winning percentage and a 13-32 record with Prevette as head coach.
The Lions' record is the worst record among Big Ten teams in that span.
Members of the team said they feel their coach is incompetent and often upsets players because of what she says to them. Dohanics said she is frustrated with her coach and Delaney-Scheetz for hiring Prevette in the first place.
"[Prevette is] feeding balls or whatever, [so you would think] she must know what she's doing," Dohanics said Monday in a telephone interview. "But she has none of the skills that you need for coaching. It's just so black and white to me, but not to her boss or whoever else is above her."
Even though it seems the entire team is against Prevette, one of her former employers feels otherwise. Joey Scrivano, head coach of Baylor's women's tennis team, hired Prevette as an assistant coach in 2006.
He said she was an extremely hard worker. He added that she made an impact during her tenure coaching there.
"I would take things with a grain of salt when the head coach is trying to turn around a program," Scrivano said Monday.
"You can't get sucked into that, because Dawna is 100 percent professional, she's doing all the right things. Dawna is cleaning up someone else's mess and she's going to do an incredible job for Penn State," he said.
Despite the dissent from the team, Scrivano thinks if the players buy into her coaching philosophies, they will "be winners."
"I always got along with her, so did others. I thought she related well to us," Schmulbach, Prevette's former player at North Texas, said. "She was new out from college, a year removed from playing. So the way she related to us, she understood where we were coming from as a player. She definitely knew how much to push her players."
Yet, those close to the team are still upset at how the players are being treated.
Adeeb Zobeideh, father of Denisa, believes the coaching staff has an opportunity to improve its motivational tactics.
He said they should do so "in private" instead of in front of others at a competition.
He said his daughter has done different things to handle the situation, but he has given her advice to handle her issues with care.
"People join great companies and great teams and leave for bad managers and bad coaches," he said. "Based on that, I don't know what Denisa will do."
As Michael Prishlyak sees his sister suffer at Penn State, he said it troubles him to be far away from the situation.
"I think she will [transfer]," Michael said. "Dawna doesn't care about their studies. She doesn't care about their exams, she doesn't care about their health, she doesn't care about anything."
Dohanics said she hates leaving Penn State, but knowing she won't have to deal with Prevette's antics anymore has made it easier.
"With Buffy, I would have just cried, cried and cried," Dohanics said. "I just wouldn't want to leave. But maybe it's a good thing. Maybe, thanks to Dawna, it's so easy to walk away from Penn State."
