DATE: Friday, August 22, 1997               TAG: 9708220977

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  106 lines

GREEN WON'T RUN AWAY TRACK COACH TRIES TO PUT BEHIND HIM CHARGE OF INDECENT LIBERTIES WITH MINOR.

The irony is that, in some ways, life has never been better for Walt Green.

Membership in Green's Atlantic Coast Track Club hit an all-time high this summer with more than 80 high-school aged boys and girls from around the region.

Green's athletes captured six national titles at the AAU Junior Olympics two weeks ago in Charlotte, N.C. One runner, a 16-year-old phenom from Norfolk named Rachelle Boone, won both the 100- and 200-meter races, and in 1 1/2 years under Green's tutelage has developed open-ended potential.

But Green, a former English teacher and track coach at Maury High School, has been jobless since his arrest in January for allegedly taking indecent liberties with a minor, one of his former female students, who is pregnant.

The three charges were dropped by a Norfolk judge in March on a technicality - the prosecutors filed them under the wrong statute. But Norfolk prosecutor Elizabeth Dopp says her office plans to refile charges - that Green had sex with the then-16-year-old girl last December - sometime after the baby is born in September.

``I've pretty much been driving on,'' says Green, who will turn 37 on Tuesday, sitting in the basement of his parents' home near Norview High School, his alma mater. ``As far as I'm concerned, it's over.''

``I really don't expect anything more to happen,'' says Green's attorney, Curtis Brown, whose son, Michael, was coached by Green and now runs at William and Mary. ``But if they want to do (blood) tests, we're ready to do them. We're not running away from them.''

Green hasn't run from anything. He volunteered as an assistant coach last spring at Western Branch High School and helped the Bruins win the Group AAA state championship.

He chaperoned Atlantic Coast kids to meets in six states this summer. And he went to San Diego with Boone, just the two of them, for a week-long camp for elite junior-level runners.

``I know nothing of Walt Green except the very best,'' says Gloria A. Boone, Rachelle Boone's mother. ``He's come to my house and tutored my daughter and some other girls. I've seen the way he's dealt with them, as a friend and a teacher and a role model. I've never seen anything else.''

Brown says he took at least 100 calls last winter from people asking how they could help Green, but that Green's good name was nonetheless damaged by the charges.

Green has spent the months since patching and mending, by being himself, and by working feverishly with his track club. Now that the summer season is over, Green says he is weighing three job opportunities. He was not rehired by the Norfolk School District after his case was dismissed.

``Walter Green's contract was non-renewed for personnel reasons completely unrelated to his court problems,'' Norfolk schools spokesman George Raiss says.

Green concedes that he was teaching under a provisional license and had not attained enough college credits for full certification to teach high school business, his planned area of concentration.

Green says the provision allowed him until next June to earn the credits, which he says he intended to do, but he says the district also was within its rights to let him go.

``You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what the real reason is,'' says Green, who still returned to the district payroll in March and will be paid through August. He also received back pay held from his suspension. ``I didn't expect them to hire me back.''

That's a shame, says Western Branch track coach Wade Williams, who jumped to enlist Green last spring.

``I judge people by their words and actions,'' says Williams ``I've been around that young man many times on trips and I've never heard him say anything out of the way to a young lady or touch one inappropriately, and I have been around male coaches who treated females inappropriately.

``I don't believe he did what he was accused of. And until it's proven by some sort of blood test, I'm not going to believe that Walt would do that.''

Citing his lawyer's advice, Green does not address the old charges directly. He's no religious fanatic, Green says smiling, but he's put everything in God's hands.

``Things happen for a reason,'' says Green. ``But this is a heck of a thing to go through.''

Green, a graduate of Virginia State University and a former Army officer who remains in the inactive Army Reserve, has been a runner and track devotee since his father, Walter, coached the sport at Norview.

He later found that he loved coaching track, too. When Green was selling insurance in 1991, he started a summertime track club with just three girls, one of whom was Norview's Tonya Williams, now a world-class hurdler.

Green built his roster of athletes and assistant coaches, such as Western Branch's Williams and Salem's Sherecee Purham, and merged with another club in '93 to become the Atlantic Coast club.

The club practices twice a week, mostly at Norfolk State, in the summer and sends athletes to meets on a budget approaching $50,000 from donations and fund-raisers.

In the meantime, Green coached Maury's cross country team for four years and took over the girls track team two years ago, when he began teaching at the school. He quickly discovered Boone, who now attends Booker T. Washington, and urged her to come out for the team.

``I met him when he started coaching Rachelle,'' says Gloria Boone, a widow. ``He's a father-figure to her. She's crazy about him.''

Green, who is single, has two children of his own; a 16-year-old daughter who lives in Greensboro, N.C., and a 6-year-old son whose mother, Green says, was once engaged to him.

Whether an underaged woman will again claim that he has a third child is something that Green says does not dominate his thoughts.

``I can't waste time worrying about things that might happen,'' he says. ``A lot of things you think are going to happen never do.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

GARY C. KNAPP

Walt Green has continued to coach youth track athletes, but his

reputation has been damaged by the charge of a former student.

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