Harvard Women's lacrosse Coach Carole Kleinfelder, who has led her team to three final fours in the past four seasons, has turned down an offer to accept the same post at Yale, officials there said last week.
One Yale official, who declined to be named, said Kleinfelder turned down the job last month. Sara Hoffman, a spokesperson in Yale's sports information office, indicated that the job had been offered to a different coach this week.
Kleinfelder has not returned telephone calls to her home and Harvard office. She spends much of her summer traveling and helping to run lacrosse camps at colleges and high schools around the country. In keeping Kleinfelder, Harvard's athletic department appears to have dodged a bullet. The loss of Kleinfelder would have dealt a significant blow to the lacrosse program, which won the national championship in 1990.
Despite her on-the-field success, insiders describe the relationship between Kleinfelder and top athletic department officials, including Direc- Cleary and others have thus far balked at providing the support Kleinfelder wants. An internal athletic department report obtained by The Crimson in February bears out much of Kleinfelder's criticism of the department and shows that Harvard spent more than twice as much on men's teams as it did on women's teams during the 1991-92 year. Cleary did not return a phone call yesterday. Kleinfelder has paid a price for her public criticism of the athletic department. A day after she was quoted extensively in a December Crimson article, her truck tires were slashed in the parking lot of the Gordon Indoor Track and Tennis Center. Both the coach and Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III said at the time they suspected the act was committed in retaliation for her comments, but the perpetrator was never found. Kleinfelder's team this year had a record of 13-3 and was co-champion of the Ivy League. The women's team lost to Virginia in overtime, 11-10, in this spring's national semifinals
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