UPDATE: CHS Baseball

CHS baseball team parents felt comfortable backing head coach Mike Lee last week after meeting with Coach Lee and Claremont Unified School District (CUSD) representatives.

The story, though, hasn't completely faded away. Will Bigham has an article the Daily Bulletin that says that not only did Coach Lee resign his prior job at Westlake High School after complaints from parents over text messages he sent to his players, but he was also dismissed from the job he had before Westlake:

Lee worked from 2001 to 2003 as head coach at Newbury Park High School, and was fired after several parents complained about what they considered aggressive and inappropriate behavior by Lee toward players.

Lee responded to the firing by filing a defamation lawsuit against seven parents in 2004.

According to Bigham's article:

[Lee] tried unsuccessfully to find a coaching job for the 2004 season, and in court documents blamed his inability to find work on parents' "systematic campaign of publishing defamatory, slanderous and libelous comments" about him.

Two of the plaintiffs settled with Lee, the action against [parent Scott] Carpenter was dismissed, and Charles and Kathleen Fick successfully had the suit thrown out, said Paul Smigliani, their attorney in the case.

The article goes on to say that "the overwhelming majority of [Claremont team] parents left satisfied with Lee's answers, according to several parents who attended the meeting."

The matter was also a subject of a letter to the Claremont Courier by Marguerite Raybould, who didn't seem so much upset with Coach Lee as with Claremont Unified School District officials.