Zacchio: Something stinks in Somers

• Somers girls basketball head coach Kristi Dini was fired Tuesday.
• Dini said there was a disagreement with administration, but was given no concrete reason for her dismissal.
• Somers was 19-3 last year, its best season in program history. The Tuskers were 53-26 under Dini.

As the days pass, more details are being revealed surrounding the shocking news of Kristi Dini’s firing as the Somers girls basketball coach.

Dini initially said a disagreement with Somers superintendent Dr. Raymond Blanch was the reasoning behind her not returning to the team next year for a chance to capitalize on the best season in program history.

Dini has still not been contacted by anyone at Somers as of Sunday afternoon. Nobody in the Somers administration is talking to confirm or deny the accusation, which many view as an admission of guilt.

“It’s (messed) up,” one Section 1 girls basketball coach said. “I’ve been pretty fortunate with administrators and parents. Every year I have one kid or parent threatening to quit over playing time. It wears on you. Every coach deals with it. In (Dini’s) case, it’s extremely unfair.”

We know that Blanch is an AAU coach in his spare time, and that his teams have crossed paths with Dini’s at times. Parents have also claimed that he is not her biggest fan.

Related: Kristi Dini out as Somers head girls basketball coach

Dougherty: There is some explaining to do at Somers

More than half a dozen witnesses at a Zero Gravity AAU tournament game on Apr. 19, 2015 between the East Coast Panthers, coached by Chris Vitale and Blanch, and Dini’s New York Extreme Hoops team provided detailed accounts to The Journal News/lohud surrounding a verbal fusillade from Vitale and Blanch directed at Dini.

The coaches lashed out at Dini after one of her players shot — and sank — a 3-pointer in the final seconds of a 51-38 win, saying Dini had “no class” and using vulgar language towards her, the witnesses said.

“There definitely was, I guess I’ll use the word ‘drama,’” Dini said of the post-game exchange. “So after last spring … I chose, after some situations, to not coach any of the games against (Vitale and Blanch’s) teams.”

Dini asked a parent to step in whenever her team had to face Vitale and Blanch. The former Putnam Valley standout opted to not even attend those games.

“I thought that it would be in the best interest of me, the kids, the parents, and my Somers (varsity) program — not my AAU program — to not go to those games,” Dini said.

Dini went on to lead the Tuskers to a 19-3 mark this past season, their best in program history, and earned her second league coach of the year honor in three years.

The Section 1 coaches association gave Dini a plaque for her efforts, while Somers showed her the door for seemingly no legitimate reason, or with no explanation given.

“You saw her at the County Center (for the Section 1 championships) — her whole team was there. They love being around her, they love what she stands for,” Harrison girls basketball coach Louis Kail said of Dini. “It’s sad when politics play such a huge role in the coaching world. It’s sad.”

Many are pointing the finger at Blanch, whose daughter is an eighth-grader in the Somers school district, and plays basketball. Blanch has said through Somers’ human resources department that he will not comment on the situation.

There are rumblings throughout the Somers community that Dini’s replacement will be Darryl Atkinson, assistant coach of the Tuskers’ boys varsity team.

Atkinson is also vice president of the East Coast Panthers. Somers boys basketball head coach Chris DiCintio is president and founder of the Panthers.

Blanch, Vitale, Atkinson, and DiCintio all have eighth-grade daughters in the district who play basketball. All four girls were teammates on the Somers Red Storm, a team coached by Vitale and Blanch that won the Brewster Sports Center Super League this past summer.

If it is true that Blanch fired Dini over a personal vendetta, or to make way for a coach who was likely to be more favorable towards his daughter, it’s a horrible look for the school, and even more so for Blanch.

For the incoming Somers coach, whomever he or she will be, how can they feel comfortable in that position? It would be bad enough trying to fill the giant hole Dini's departure left, but how could they feel any sense of job security or support from administration?

If it is in fact Atkinson, or anyone with close ties to Blanch, there may be less to worry about. Then again, it would likely only create more outrage in the Somers community.

There have been a colorful array of metaphors for fecal matter used to describe what happened to Dini, but the one common denominator is that whatever is going on in Somers, it stinks.

Twitter: @Zacchio_LoHud, @LoHudGirlsHoops