Basketball coach fired

By Steph Crosier

BELLEVILLE, ONT. (20/01/12) – Rich Whitfield, head coach of the Loyalist Lancers, offers encouragement to his team, Friday, Jan. 20th, against the Durham Lords. Whitfied has been fired. Photo by Rebecca Rempel.

Loyalist College men’s basketball head coach Rich Whitfield was fired Wednesday, said Athletic Director Jim Buck.

Buck said  it came down to philosophical differences.

“Differences from an athletic director to a coach on how the program is being run and where it is going and we had different viewpoints,” said Buck in an interview Thursday afternoon. “So we felt that we should go on a different direction and that direction is to move forward without Rich as the head coach.”

Buck said that Whitfield may have been too harsh on players.

“I think that probably could be part of it,” said Buck. “I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about it, but you know it’s probably the way the program was being run in a certain area that didn’t meet the way I would like the program to be run, and ultimately that’s my decision as athlete director.”

Ryan Barbeau has stepped in as interim head coach, with Ryan Dickison and Mitch Miller as assistant coaches.

Whitfield, of Napanee, was hired as head coach in July 2011 after working as the assistant coach at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston.

The male Lancers head to Algonquin College Friday to take on the Thunder at 8 p.m.