A female graduate assistant for a local university’s football team has filed a federal lawsuit, saying she faced retaliation after reporting an alleged assault and other concerns while also being paid below Ohio’s minimum wage standards.
Madison Lindamood filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbus on July 10. Lindamood served as a graduate assistant for the Ohio Dominican University football team during the 2025-2026 season. Ohio Dominican is a NCAA Division II program.
In the lawsuit, Lindamood says she reported being assaulted by a football player at a university-sponsored event in March and the investigation was handled by the football coach. Additionally, Lindamood says in the lawsuit that she was paid a stipend based on an estimated workload of about 20 hours a week but she actually worked five times that or more without anyone compensating her for those hours.
Ohio Dominican said in a statement that it does not comment on pending litigation.
Ohio Dominican paid less than $2 an hour for work, lawsuit says
According to the lawsuit, the offer Lindamood received for the job was for a $5,000 stipend for 20 hours of work over a 41-week period between August 2025 and mid-May 2026, or a total of about 820 hours. The job would pay about $6.10 an hour based on the letter, Lindamood’s attorney, Sean Sobel, said.
Lindamood was expected to work like a full-time member of the coaching staff, the lawsuit says, with early morning meetings, film sessions, on-field coaching, event preparation, recruiting and other responsibilities being part of her job.
“Ms. Lindamood routinely worked approximately 119 hours per week, seven days a week, from early morning until late evening,” the lawsuit says. “During the winter offseason and spring, she routinely worked approximately 100 hours per week.”
Lindamood focused on video work, much of which was timestamped through the platform used by ODU and could be used to verify her working hours, the lawsuit says.
No one at the university tracked her actual working hours to pay her and the work she was doing would not fall under an exception to Ohio’s minimum wage law that requires $11 an hour, the lawsuit says. Based on actual hours worked, ODU paid Lindamood about $1.29 an hour, the lawsuit says.
Coaches on the football team staff acknowledged Lindamood’s work in messages, the lawsuit says.
Coaching staff retaliated against assistant after reported assault, concerns
Additionally, Lindamood says in the lawsuit that a member of the football team physically assaulted her at a March 6 university-sponsored fundraising event. The assault involved the player ripping a bag off of her, causing bruising to the back of her neck.
Lindamood reported the assault the same day to the head football coach, Kelly Cummings, according to the lawsuit. Cummings did not follow up, according to the complaint, which led Lindamood to report the assault to the university’s Dean of Students and Title IX Coordinator, who the lawsuit says assigned Cummings to conduct an investigation.
Cummings did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He is not identified as a defendant in the lawsuit. He has been the head football coach at ODU since the 2016-2017 season and previously worked as an assistant coach at the University of Toledo, University of Findlay and Wittenberg University, according to his online biography.
Cummings interviewed Lindamood as part of the investigation, the lawsuit says, and asked whether the player may have been treating her in a playfully aggressive way like a sibling. Cummings also questioned Lindamood about whether she believed she should have done anything differently and told her his own definition of assault involved blood or severe bruising.
The lawsuit says the player involved, who has not been charged criminally, was suspended but allowed to attend team practices and other events during that time.
Lindamood raised additional concerns about that, according to the lawsuit, which resulted in her being removed from a coaching staff group chat where information about practice and meetings time were relayed and being kicked out of a staff meeting in April with no explanation.
The lawsuit says coaches berated Lindamood in front of other players and she began being followed, photographed and recorded by staff and players around campus, prompting her to get safety escorts on multiple occasions.
Lindamood’s mother filed a formal retaliation and workload complaint with the university on April 22, the lawsuit says, and within hours, Cummings called Lindamood telling her not to come to work because of the complaints he’d received.
Lindamood is seeking financial damages under Title VII and Title IX, as well as for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. She is also seeking reinstatement, pay for the hours she worked and any adverse documentation in her personnel and student files at the university being removed.
Reporter Bethany Bruner can be reached at bbruner@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Female football coach sues Ohio Dominican over unpaid OT, Title IX violations
Reporting by Bethany Bruner, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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By Bethany Bruner, Columbus Dispatch | USA TODAY Network
