SAN FRANCISCO –
On New Year’s Day almost two years ago, Parker Kinney spent the day with Brian Lilly Jr. at scenic Scripps Beach in the San Diego area and realized his friend had become a shadow of himself.
Kinney and Lilly walked in the sand for hours and went to dinner. At the end of the night before they said goodbye, they spoke about their struggles together when they rowed for the coach back at the University of California-San Diego and how it had affected their well-being.
But Kinney couldn’t fully grasp the depth of Lilly’s desperation that afternoon: The 19-year-old college rower took his own life just three days later.
Kinney believes his friend was marginalized by abuse from trainer Geoff Bond. Lilly’s parents see it the same way.
“This guy basically destroyed Brian’s self-esteem, his threat to kick Brian off the team. And I don’t need a sports psychologist here to tell me how damaging that was,” said father Brian Lilly Sr.
Brenda and Brian Lilly Sr. have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Bond and the school, alleging that the coach abused their son primarily because he challenged Bond’s decision to allow a rower, despite allegations of sexual misconduct against the athlete to stay in the team. They firmly believe their son was verbally abused by Bond, which led to his suicide in January 2021.
Kinney said he saw the abuse.
“I felt like they were trying to sweep the whole sexual assault allegation under the rug, and a decent number of kids had legitimate concerns about it and were like, ‘That’s pretty screwed up,'” Kinney said. “A lot of kids didn’t talk about it. Brian talked about it, so Geoff got revenge on him. Brian’s main concern was that this would damage the integrity of the team, I agree.”
Bond’s defense team, who trained at UC San Diego until last January, filed a motion to dismiss the Lillys’ case. The defense said Bond did not see Brian Lilly Jr. in the nine months before his death and that the trainer had inquired during the pandemic lockdown if Lilly was returning to school in San Diego from the East Coast, where he had been living .
Several of Bond’s former college rowers from Cal, Penn and UCSD also reached out to The Associated Press in support of the coach.
“I absolutely loved his coaching style and think it’s a great fit for young college kids,” Gary Champagne, who rowed for Bond at Cal in 2002-03 as a freshman, said via email.
Lilly family attorney Nicholas Lewis said Brian Lilly Jr. was involved in the rowing program from home by participating in the team’s regular video calls.
UC San Diego declined to comment through a spokesperson, citing pending litigation. The school gave no details as Bond departed as coach on January 13.
The Lillys said they are determined to protect others from the kind of treatment they believe their son has endured.
“My whole thing right now is giving my son a voice,” his father said. “He was the ultimate underdog. He was a hero.”
Lilly’s parents said their son never suffered from mental illness before rowing at UCSD.
Lewis said the teenager briefly underwent inpatient treatment in July 2020 after experiencing what the attorney described as psychotic and schizophrenic symptoms, including paranoia and disorganized thoughts, before Lilly stabilized within days and then spent the rest of the year dying continued outpatient therapy. Bond’s defense has argued the trainer was never aware of Lilly’s emotional state.
The Lillys said their son overcame a lot to even emerge as a collegiate rower. Her son used to be “a chubby little guy,” his father said, because of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which he eventually outgrew through hard work and eating right. He ran the New York City Marathon and completed an Ironman triathlon in Lake Placid.
Brian Lilly Sr. recalled how his son strained so much he threw up multiple times during a rowing session in February 2020, and that Bond described the vomiting as a “weaker” reaction.
Some rowers who competed for Bond at UC San Diego have had similar experiences, describing a culture in which Bond used crass and abusive language, among other disparagements regularly uttered in front of athletes.
Kinney said that in March 2020, Bond yelled at him on the water with inflammatory language about Kinney’s friendship and support of Lilly.
“I was paralyzed with fear. I was 18,” Kinney said. “I called my father. I lost respect for the program.”
Kinney eventually left the team, and others left as well, with at least some of them sharing that rowing for Bond had affected their mental health.
Now Kinney really misses his friend and a sport he used to love: “I’m pretty deaf to it myself.”
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