Anonymous College Athlete Feedback Site Seeks Coach Input, Sans Subpoenas

(Design by Grace Hughes, Photos via 2adays.com, Adobe Stock)

Davenport University is a private institution in Grand Rapids, Mich., with an undergraduate enrollment below 6,000 students. The school maintains 27 varsity athletic programs that compete in the NCAA’s Division II, where they have mostly languished in national obscurity.

Yet a quick Google search leads to a place where the Davenport Panthers have drawn notice, though not for the reasons the school might hope. Scroll briefly and you shall happen upon a heaping—albeit neatly consolidated—pile of criticism portraying DU as an exceptionally awful place to play sports.

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On 2aDays.com, an online platform where athletes can anonymously review college athletic programs, facilities and personnel, Davenport has received strikingly low marks from what appears to be a sizable pool of critics. As of Monday, the university held a 1.4 out of 5-star rating from 697 reviews, and only 11% of respondents said they would recommend it to prospective athletes.

That distinguishes Davenport, by volume, as being among the most poorly-rated of the roughly 1,600 schools that have received some kind of review on the site. A particular focus of Davenport’s virtual denunciation is Ronda Varnesdeel, the university’s associate director of athletics and former head softball coach, who has been at DU for more than 16 years.

Dragging down the department’s overall scores are Varnesdeel’s individual ratings: 1.2 stars and a 6% recommendations rate out of 403 reviews. Beyond those figures, dozens upon dozens of blistering comments from unnamed users purporting to be athletes, parents and others with relevant perspective, blame her for an athletic department they say is overrun with toxicity, scandal and unethical conduct.

Who exactly is making these allegations is unclear. While some include very specific claims, none of her reviews, which date back to March 2025, have been submitted by athletes who completed the platform’s verification process.

2aDays features some 54,000 ratings in total. About 90% of them address coaches and athletic administrators. The scores offer one of the most concentrated public repositories of college athlete feedback. Its engagement is unevenly distributed, with high-profile programs and revenue-generating sports tending to receive little attention. For Olympic sport programs and lesser-known coaches, however, the platform can serve as one of the most widely visible sources of information.

Varnesdeel’s 2aDays page, for example, ranks second on Google for her full name, just behind her Davenport athletics staff directory page.

Any negative attention from the site, however, has not appeared to impact her standing at the school, where she also serves as deputy Title IX coordinator. And in response to a query from Sportico, a Davenport spokesperson suggested its deeper worries lay less with the content of the criticisms than the forum enabling it.

“We are concerned by platforms that allow anonymous and unverified claims to be shared without context or accountability,” the spokesperson said. “Matters involving student-athletes and athletic programs are best addressed through established processes that ensure fairness, accuracy and appropriate review.”

Varnesdeel, in a separate email, criticized the platform for showing a disregard for the accuracy of the accusations leveled on its site, calling it “extremely irresponsible and harmful.” In February, Varnesdeel filed a Jane Doe lawsuit in Michigan state court, seeking to uncover and hold liable the anonymous posters of what she says are false and malicious claims made against her. She is suing for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy by false light. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Kent County (Mich.) Circuit Court on her motion to issue subpoenas geared towards identifying her maligners.

Keirsten Sires, founder and CEO of 2aDays, told Sportico that Varnesdeel has, over the past year, sent dozens of email complaints to the company, describing those communications as “borderline harassing and threatening.” Sires characterized Varnesdeel’s litigation as a “wild goose chase” and expressed confidence that any attempt to subpoena 2aDays for the commenters’ identities would ultimately fail.

Separately, Sires said, Davenport had recently reached out to 2aDays through the university’s lawyer.

Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, 2aDays and other web-based forums are immunized from legal liability for user-generated content, though the authors of that content are not. Sires says that while she routinely gets letters from universities’ lawyers, the company has, to date, not been sued nor subpoenaed, and has never removed a rating or unmasked a poster at the request of a school or coach.

Over a series of telephone interviews, Sires staunchly defended the ethics of allowing verified but anonymized athletes—and mostly unverified “others”—to speak freely behind a veil with scarce editorial oversight.

“2aDays was built by athletes, for athletes, to ensure student-athletes have a trusted space to share their experiences,” said Sires, who founded the platform in 2014. “Every athlete deserves the right to share their story, and there should never be a situation where that voice is silenced by a coach or institution. Efforts to dismiss or suppress these perspectives risk reinforcing the very issues athletes are speaking up about.”

At Lacrosse Purposes

On its social media channels, the platform recently spotlighted the case of Emilia Ward, the head women’s lacrosse coach at Central Michigan who resigned last month after the team’s 0-5 start. While the university did not disclose the reasons for her immediate departure, Ward’s 2aDays page had logged complaints about her coaching dating back to 2023, albeit all from unverified commenters identified as “other.” Before stepping down, Ward once held the distinction as 2aDays’ lowest-rated head D-I coach in women’s lacrosse, a sport that seems to have inspired especially harsh criticism of coaches on the platform.

In a LinkedIn message to Sportico, Ward maintained that her resignation from CMU was of her own choosing and unrelated to what was written about her on 2aDays.

“I stepped away for personal reasons and to start a new career path,” she said.

The university did not respond to an email inquiry sent to an athletic department spokesperson.

Former Xavier women’s lacrosse coach Meg Decker resigned last spring following years of criticism on her 2aDays page, including condemnatory posts titled, “She Will Ruin Your Mental Health and Lacrosse Career,” and “From Players to Pawn: A Former Athlete’s Warning About Meg Decker.” Decker has since been hired as athletic director at Annapolis Area Christian School in Maryland. Xavier declined to comment and Decker and the high school did not respond to emails.

Last week, Sires said she received a takedown request from the attorney of another collegiate lacrosse coach, Jennifer Pawlowski of D-II Gannon University in Erie, Pa. The demand followed an Instagram post by 2aDays that highlighted critical comments and allegations about Pawlowski published on the platform.

When asked, Sires said she had no intention of removing either the social media post or the underlying page.

Legal experts consulted by Sportico note that online platforms generally retain their legal immunity when repackaging anonymous allegations, even if they are defamatory, provided they do not materially contribute to or develop those claims.

“If it is clearly user content, that is not going to void Section 230 protections,” said Jeff Kossof, a law professor and non-resident senior fellow at Vanderbilt University’s The Future of Free Speech.

Pawlowski did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment. Doug Oathout, Gannon’s chief of staff, said last Thursday that the school was aware of the online comments and was “definitely looking into it,” but declined to comment further, citing the university’s practice of not publicly discussing personnel matters.

Then on Friday, the university issued a brief announcement that Pawlowski was stepping down immediately, after seven years at the helm and midway through the current season. The school provided no additional details in response to follow-up questions.

Sires said 2aDays has more recently implemented a process to remove pages for coaches and administrators who are no longer involved in college athletics, provided they can verify their current status. Otherwise, the page remains active indefinitely, though it may indicate that the person is not currently affiliated with a school.

Sires emphasized that 2aDays showcases plenty of positive experiences from athletes, and about coaches, and its interactions with the latter extend beyond addressing complaints. For instance, James Jones, Yale’s head men’s basketball coach, has submitted to two video interviews with 2aDays, which were published on its blog.

That said, 2aDays continues to wrestle with how to engage universities more directly—both as a product and a business—without compromising its stated athlete-first mission. Later this year, Sires said, the company plans to roll out new features designed to allow coaches and administrators to directly respond to comments on their pages. 2aDays also is brainstorming ways to package and sell its data to universities.

Risky Business

In enabling coach responses, Sires said 2aDays is making sure to include guardrails that prevent athletes from being identified without their consent. Schools and their staff must themselves be mindful of FERPA, the federal law safeguarding the privacy of student records in schools receiving U.S. Department of Education funding.

Universities frequently invoke the statue and its state-law counterparts when declining to publicly address off-field controversies involving athletes. However, as Leroy Rooker, former director of the Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office, notes, FERPA only comes into play if a school discloses information from an “education record.”

Even if coaches can respond to criticism in near real time, practical considerations may limit their willingness to do so. Those include the risks of diminishing returns and increasing exposure that come with publicly replying to criticism in a forum they have no control over, and where they are the only named participants.

“It wouldn’t be advisable to engage in that forum because it does not seem to be a battle that is worth winning,” said Liz Robertshaw, executive director of the intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association. “You are walking into a situation where you don’t know anything than a few words that were written in a moment.”

Courtney Oliver-Elkins, the former East Carolina head softball coach and current Wichita State assistant, said she would “absolutely not” be inclined to respond, despite feeling misrepresented on the platform.

Oliver-Elkins currently scores a 2.5 rating and 30% recommendation rate on 2aDays, based on 30 verified athlete reviews. All were submitted between April 2018 and March 2019, when she was still coaching ECU. Oliver-Elkins led the Pirates until 2021, then was an assistant at Houston before joining Wichita State’s staff.

“I am not in the business of responding to an anonymous source or defending myself to an anonymous source when I know that I was making the right decision at the time for the program,” Oliver-Elkins said in an email.

Regarding 2aDays, she added: “I don’t think it should be anonymous. I think there should be a vetting process to clarify any accusations. At the end of the day 2aDays is just allowing people a platform to post information that nobody can prove.”

This tension—balancing the free flow of information with protections for truth—is familiar to any online forum built on anonymous assessments, from Yelp to Rate My Professors. But in college sports, the challenge is particularly acute.

“We didn’t reinvent the wheel with an idea, but stepped into a really passionate space,” Sires said. “You have fans and parents who are passionate and who have money on the line.”

2aDays originated as a classroom assignment in an entrepreneurship course Sires was taking at Skidmore College, a D-III school in upstate New York, where she lettered as an athlete. Originally recruited as a tennis player, Sires said she “didn’t have the best experience with my coach,” prompting her to quit the team after her freshman year and walk on to the soccer program, which she enjoyed much more.

The company remains a family affair. Sires’ father, Bob Sires, a serial entrepreneur and investor, financially backed the business and now serves as its chairman; mom Tara Sires oversees editorial; brother Brandon Sires is head of sales and partnerships; and husband Matt Battaglia, who played football at Yale and now is CFO of a youth sports camp company, also helps out behind the scenes.

“It is just us,” said Keirsten Sires. “So it is not like we have anyone to report to as far as a private equity [owner]. All our decisions are ours. We are dynamic and nimble.”

In some respects, 2aDays brings to public view a process universities are already required to conduct, though preferably in private: gathering athlete feedback in the interest of improvement. Under NCAA Bylaw 8.4, member institutions must conduct annual exit interviews with departing athletes from each sport, soliciting input on their overall experience, time demands and concerns with their program.

Beyond those broad requirements, however, the NCAA leaves key details—such as methodology, participation and specific questions—up to the discretion of each school. Some universities have turned to third-party survey platforms, like RealResponse, to facilitate the process and create a more structured, traceable record.

However, public access to this information—and the accountability that comes with it—vary widely depending on state public records laws and institutional interpretation thereof. In 2020, Texas Tech fired women’s basketball coach Marlene Stollings following a USA Today investigation that drew in part on athlete exit interview surveys obtained through public records request. Stollings later sued the university for wrongful termination; the parties settled the case after Texas Tech agreed to pay her $740,000, including attorneys’ fees.

As a private university, Davenport is not subject to Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, and as a D-II athletic department in a state with two Big Ten powers, it draws limited attention from local media outlets. That leaves its athlete recruits relatively few avenues for insight: the school itself, word of mouth or 2aDays.

Mission Control

For most of its first decade in existence, the platform allowed only verified athletes to post ratings and comments, requiring users to submit a specific kind of photo and other proof they were on an active college roster.

However, in a broader 2024 rollout, the 2aDays expanded its posting options, allowing users to identify as parents, athletes or “others” without undergoing verification. “I think, before, it was too strict to our own demise, and we were getting a ton of feedback [about that] from athletes themselves,” Sires said.

Along with widening its pool of contributors, the site also introduced rankings for athletic facilities, staff and campus visits.

Sires estimates that 80% of self-identified athletes who post on the site are verified, adding that the platform limits submissions to one rating per topic per email or IP address.

In the case of Davenport and Varnesdeel, Sires said 2aDays had previously confirmed none of those unverified reviews originated from the same IP address.

That said, Sires acknowledges, “If somebody wants to get around any system, they can technically do so.”

Robertshaw, who previously spent 15 years coaching at Boston University, argued that sites like 2aDays are contributing to an increasingly inhospitable environment for coaches in general, and especially women in the profession.

“We talk about the mental health of student-athletes, which is very much in the news,” said Robertshaw, but [what] is forgotten about is the mental health of coaches.”

2aDays is exploring ways to expand its verification process to include parents of athletes, though Sires said the effort has encountered a number of logistical hurdles. Additional changes for the site include adding new rating filters and creating purchasable reports based on its data.

For now, 2aDays’ sole revenue stream is a $20-per-month subscription service launched in early 2025, called Athlete Intelligence, which Sires says is geared primarily toward high school and club coaches and programs. Looking ahead, she envisions a second line of business in data analytics, using the platform’s ratings to identify and track trends across programs, which could be a selling point to college programs.

“Our biggest thing was building trust with athletes, and it took a long time—I’m not going to lie,” said Sires. “It was to build trust and build data, and now we are moving into the revenue stream portion of things … But it always goes back to the mission. Could I have made a billion dollars by allowing universities to delete their ratings? Sure.”

She added that she has received “quite a bit of interest” from companies in acquiring 2aDays, but emphasized she has no intention of selling. She also raised concerns about private equity’s creep into youth sports, suggesting she does not want to be another company to put profit over young athletes.

“I am interested to see where these companies that get bought out by PE go,” she said. “But we don’t need to adhere to that.”

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