Vice President tells Governing Board in October 2022 that “previous coaches did everything they could to sabotage our program and we have moved past that.”
The Yavapai Community College sports program is burgeoning. It has recently added the women’s basketball and soccer programs to its already established baseball, softball, volleyball, men’s soccer and e-sports programs. The student dormitories are beginning to fill with athletes.
Once she was established and familiar with the Community College, President Dr. Lisa Rhine instituted major changes in the Athletic Department’s culture by creating specific written goals for coaches to meet, including goals for fundraising, recruiting, community participation, and “team goals.” For the first time in its 50-year history, the College directed the coaches to focus more heavily on recruiting outstanding Yavapai County student athletes, with a goal of each team being 
made up of about 25% student athletes from the County.
However, the changes were apparently not well received by some coaches, as evidenced by the turnover last summer among the coaching staff. In July 2022, Yavapai Community College began looking for new head baseball and in August a new softball coach. According to a commentary written by Community College 
Governing Board Chair Deb McCasland in the September 7, 2022, Verde Independent newspaper, the coaches left because they refused to accept new recruiting and scholarship guidelines instituted by the college.
In recent years, several Yavapai College Board members, especially those from the Sedona/Verde Valley Third 
District, have raised concerns about the College’s lack of focus on recruiting outstanding local athletes. They also expressed concern about the college’s practice of providing generous taxpayer-funded scholarships to out-of-state and international athletes, while rosters often included few or no local athletes.
According to Chair McCasland, the coaches were asked 
five years ago “to focus more attention on recruiting local student athletes (county/state).” A “mandate” was instituted “that required 25% of all student athletes recruited had to be from local high schools,” she said. Furthermore, the coaches were told “that the support for out-of-state and international students will decrease as we increased the scholarship support for local 
student-athletes.” “Those three coaches who decided to leave the college ignored those mandates,” wrote McCasland.
Several coaches reportedly ignored these mandates and resigned. In July 2022, 14-year veteran Ryan Cougill resigned as the Head Baseball Coach at Yavapai College. 
Assistant coach Miles Kizer also announced his resignation from Yavapai College at the same time. Then, in August 2022, the Athletic Department announced the resignation of Doug Eastman as the Head Coach of the Yavapai College softball team. Eastman won 343 games, making him the winningest softball coach in program history. His 300th win at 
Yavapai Community College (also the 800th of his career) came during the 2022 season.
At the October 2022 Board meeting, Vice President Rodney Jenkins commented that the previous coaches “did everything they could to sabotage our program.” (See video tape.)
The College hired replacements for the coaches who left an faced issues such as rebuilding a program and quickly recruiting athletes for it. It appeared from the October 2022 presentation to the Governing Board that it was relatively successful in its efforts.
Please see the 14 minute video clip of the October presentation to the Governing Board by clicking here. Unfortunately, a small portion of the video at its beginning does not have sound.