Diane Dobson felt it coming for a long time.

In six years at Hazen coaching girls and boys swim, she had made the programs into something to admire. She had tripled numbers, made the teams into yearly state placers and produced state title winners. She had also made waves.

Dobson butted heads at times with administrators at Hazen and with the Renton School District. Now, perhaps because of that and perhaps not, after a reorganization of the district’s swim programs that turned out not to happen, she’s out.

“I didn’t want to believe it before,” Dobson said. “It just seems underhanded and dirty.”

The first warning for Dobson happened when the district lagged on processing standard away-meet forms for the upcoming fall season in February.

Then in late April the district decided to run a cooperative program between Lindbergh and Renton (meaning one coaching staff would coach both teams) in order to deal with budget cuts.

The district ended the coaching positions at Lindbergh, Renton and Hazen, even though Hazen was not part of the proposed changes.

“It’s more fair to just have all the coaches for both swim and dive apply for these two positions,” Renton School District spokesman Randy Matheson said at the time. “That gives the best applicant a chance to come back in and get a program fresh.”

A month later the district reconsidered the changes, leaving the programs exactly the same as before, except the coaches’ contracts had not been renewed.

At this point, the whispers of doubt in Dobson’s mind began to grow into yells.

“It was my suspicion the school was taking out a personal vendetta,” she said. “I’m a little bit in shock and disbelief that they drug everybody through the muck to get it done.”

One reason Dobson ran afoul of certain people with the district was because she vehemently opposed making cuts – something that led to teams sometimes topping 65 athletes.

Those huge numbers (Lindbergh and Renton usually settled around 20 to 25 athletes) could be spun two completely different ways.

From Dobson’s side, everyone who has the will to try out for swim team, including special-needs athletes and those who had never been in a pool before, deserved a shot.

Meanwhile, Dobson said individuals with the district told her athletes who didn’t know how to swim should be taking swim lessons, not join the swim team. She was also warned by the district that if her numbers continued to be so high, she would have to make cuts.

“That is outside of the program that I have created and I will not cut,” Dobson said in a Reporter interview last fall. “Swimming is a life skill and there is so much more to the Hazen program than success in the pool.”

Bigger numbers meant more practice time and more buses for away meets, tough calls for the district at a time when the budget is crunching.

While it’s not clear what exactly was the tipping point, it is clear Dobson and the district didn’t see eye-to-eye. And who is to say what’s right in situations like this? The district certainly didn’t want to cut swimmers or combine the Renton and Lindbergh programs, but budget restrictions forced them to at least consider the changes.

Would the district really go through all of this trouble to fire a coach who’s excelling at her job because she occasionally raises her voice in protest? Does the indecisiveness throughout simply make it look that way? Or was it something else?

Matheson said the reason for the change was simple: New coach Ken Alfonso was simply a better option, and a teacher too.

“The individual that was hired was selected because of his abilities,” Matheson said. “This has less to do with the former coach and more to do with the new coach.”

Alfonso has coached high school swimming and water polo as well as Olympic Development water polo programs. He’s also a language arts teacher, something Matheson said the district hopes to utilize.

Both Dobson and the district were put in tough spots.

But it was Dobson who was putting in the time. She was there for nine practices a week so all of the athletes could swim. It was Dobson who built Hazen into the district’s most successful program.

She has the credentials. She took the boys and girls programs at Hazen from 25-30 athletes to 65-70. The Highlander girls placed 18th at state last year, while the boys were 11th. She received the Seamount’s coach of the year award four times.

Now, abruptly, she’s done.

“I won’t coach again,” she said.