Westbrook police were continuing this week to investigate two threatening notes left on the desk and in the truck of the coach of the high school’s girls varsity softball team.

The coach, Steve Vowell, who is also a health teacher at Wescott Junior High School, resigned May 30 after finding the notes threatening his family. Vowell had moved to Maine to take the job last year after his family had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Police Chief Paul McCarthy said Monday police had some suspects, but had not completed any interviews. Westbrook Detective Sean Lally is in charge of investigating the threats but, citing the ongoing investigation, declined to comment.

In an interview this week, Vowell said his troubles in Westbrook had not begun with the threatening notes. Vowell said he has had long-standing conflicts with some of the parents of girls on his softball team, and he criticized the administration of the Westbrook School Department for failing to support him.

The school district was not renewing Vowell’s contract as a health teacher. However, Vowell said that losing his job was not related to his resignation as a coach.

Gary Groves, former Westbrook athletic director and city councilor, supported Vowell’s criticism of the administration. Groves, who is now the athletic director at Deering High School, said he resigned from Westbrook last year after a short tenure because he did not feel he was supported by the administration in conflicts with parents.

While school administrators declined to comment on Vowell’s resignation because it was a personnel matter, they expressed disappointment at remarks from Groves and defended the support administrators give to coaches and the athletic director.

“I’m very disappointed by his comments and his actions,” Westbrook High School Principal Marc Gousse said of Groves, adding, “I think there may be an agenda here that is less than positive.” Gousse then said there is a recruitment problem “with Westbrook on the receiving end.”

Gousse did not elaborate, but in April, the Maine Principals Association found that a Deering High School varsity basketball coach violated the association’s recruitment policy, and attempted to recruit an eighth-grade student from Westbrook’s Wescott Junior High School, according to a record of an April meeting of the association’s Interscholastic Management Committee. Records indicate Gousse wrote a letter requesting an investigation into whether Deering had violated the recruitment policy. Deering was found to be in violation by allowing an eighth-grade Westbrook student to attend a Deering basketball practice. The report’s recommended penalties – that Deering clarify association rules and reprimand the coach – were then questioned by Gousse, who recommended that the Interscholastic Management Committee hold a hearing and that the coach be banned for no less than two games. The committee met, and unanimously agreed to the harsher penalties.

Vowell said the administration, specifically Gousse, had been unsupportive in dealing with parents. He said there had been several incidents where parents had cursed at him at games, and one time a parent entered the dugout to chastise him. Vowell said under normal circumstances that parent would have been banned from facilities, but it was not done.

Vowell said one parent was suspended from a game, but another, who he thought was more of a problem at the same game, was not suspended.

Naming Gousse and Superintendent Stan Sawyer, Groves said the administration never did anything about a situation where a parent “stalked” him after he disciplined the parent’s daughter. Groves suggested one person who donates money to the school had been a problem at games but never disciplined because of the financial relationship, but he declined to name the individual.

Of all the accusations being made by Groves and Vowell, Gousse said they are “absolutely, unequivocally false.”

“I can honestly say that Mr. Groves never met with me to discuss the idea to ban any parents from the games,” said Sawyer, who said Vowell, too, has never met with him to discuss the administration’s support of coaches.

Gousse, who would be in the direct line of authority between Groves and Sawyer, said Groves never went to him, either.

Both Gousse and Sawyer said they attempted to keep Groves as the athletic director at Westbrook, and Sawyer said Groves was asked specifically if he had support. But Sawyer said the only reason Groves gave him as to why he was leaving was that Groves found it difficult to discipline the children of parents he grew up with.

Many softball players themselves are declining to comment, as well as their parents.

“The community has really been given a black eye unfairly,” said Susan Quinlan, a parent of one of the softball players.

Quinlan said the public has not heard the full story of the conflict between parents and Vowell, but she declined to elaborate on the record.

Vowell, Groves and Quinlan all agreed that if the problem had been addressed last year, this controversy would not have erupted. For Vowell and Groves the problem is the administration not disciplining the parents, and for the parents the problem is not disciplining Vowell.

“If the administration stepped up, maybe we wouldn’t be at this point,” Quinlan said.