Two cheerleading coaches are out at N.C. A&T - Greensboro News & Record

March 01, 2019 at 10:20PM

GREENSBORO — The two N.C. A&T cheerleading coaches at the center of a campus controversy are no longer at the school.

An A&T athletics department spokesman said Friday that the two co-head coaches — Adjoa Botwe-Rankin and Wenalyn Bell Glenn — resigned Thursday. Both have worked with A&T's cheerleaders for more than a decade.

In a statement late Thursday, A&T announced that it has appointed an athletics department official to oversee the cheerleading program as it searches for new leadership. A&T did not say why the two coaches are no longer employed.

But the pair have been in the middle of a dispute that has played out over the past month.

A first-year cheerleader went public Feb. 1 with allegations that she had been raped last fall by an A&T senior who was a member of the marching band. The cheerleader also said that her coaches failed to report the alleged assault to other university officials as required under federal law She demanded that the two be fired.

A&T's cheerleaders haven't performed at men's or women's basketball games since the allegations came out. The university said this week that the squad will be absent from the teams' final two home basketball games next week and from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament that starts March 11.

Athletics department spokesman Brian Holloway said this week that A&T has benched the squad because it's "look(ing) out for their best interest" because the cheerleaders are under such intense public scrutiny.

"They made the right decision to resign," the cheerleader told the Winston-Salem TV station. "I'm just glad everything came out like it did even though in the beginning it was terrible."

The News & Record doesn't identify victims of sexual assault.

The resignations end a long run for A&T's two cheerleading coaches.

Botwe-Rankin started with A&T as a volunteer coach in 1999 and has been a head coach since 2004. Glenn has been co-head coach since 2008 after two years as a volunteer assistant.

A&T records show that both coaches were paid $10,000 annually for these part-time jobs. Both have full-time positions with Guilford County Schools — Botwe-Rankin is an elementary math curriculum coordinator, and Glenn is an assistant principal.

Reached by email Friday morning, the two coaches declined to comment.

A&T athletics director Earl Hilton said Shawn Hendrix will oversee the program temporarily. Hendrix is the athletics department's senior administrator for women's sports. She formerly coached the women's swim team from its first season in 1998 until 2016, when A&T disbanded the program.

A&T will search for a new permanent coach or coaches for the cheerleading team.

"The university will begin a period of restoration of the cheerleading program to ensure the continued health, well-being and success of its participants going forward," Hilton said in a statement.

Contact John Newsom at (336) 373-7312 and follow @JohnNewsomNR on Twitter.