A decorated Cal State Long Beach tennis coach has filed a lawsuit against the CSU system and the university’s athletic director, alleging that she was forced out last year based on her age and gender.
Jenny Hilt-Costello had coached the women’s tennis team at CSULB for nearly 30 years when she retired in May 2025. She left as the program’s winningest coach, leading the team to 414 career wins and 22 Big West Titles. She also beat ovarian cancer while coaching the program.
But her lawsuit, filed last month in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that she “felt forced out” by Athletic Director Bobby Smitheran, who left her “no other option but to leave CSULB,” her attorneys wrote.
In an email, CSULB spokesperson Jeffrey Cook wrote that the university disagreed “with the merits of the complaint.”
Hilt-Costello’s lawsuit seeks $2.5 million from the CSU: $2 million in losses arising from mental and emotional distress, plus $500,000 in lost wages.
Smitheran was hired to lead the university’s Athletic Department in August 2023. When Hilt-Costello first met Smitheran for a one-on-one meeting a month later, Smitheran “repeatedly” asked her when she was going to retire, her lawsuit alleges.
She responded by saying that she was 51 years old and planned to take it year by year once she reached 55. During the meeting, she requested a three-year extension to her contract, which was set to expire in May 2024.
Shortly before that contract expired, the two met again, at which time Smitheran allegedly questioned her “overall motivation” and suggested she “take a step back” by letting her assistant coach, 25-year-old Gertjan De Wilder, run practices because he “might better communicate with” the young student-athletes, her lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.
According to Hilt-Costello, Associate Athletic Director Sean Ferrera also questioned her ability to communicate with Gen Z — and suggested she listen to podcasts and read literature to learn “how to better communicate” with the younger generation of student-athletes.
In her lawsuit, Hilt-Costello alleged that both instances violated the Fair Employment and Housing Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating on a wide range of factors, including age and gender.
Ultimately, Hilt-Costello was not granted her request for a three-year deal and was instead offered a one-year extension in May 2024. At the time, she alleges, Smitheran told her not to think the one-year offer was “some sinister plan to push you out.”
After that contract agreement, Smitheran continued to add stipulations, including mental health check-ins for the team, “Gen Z” trainings and requiring Deputy Athletic Director Gladie Jaffe to accompany the team on trips, Hilt-Costello alleged.
One of Hilt-Costello’s attorneys, Devon Lyon, said the university’s athletic department also tried to use comments from student-athletes as a reason to fire Hilt-Costello — that she was “old school,” too focused on winning rather than emotional well-being and that she was either too emotional or not emotional enough.
In the complaint, her lawyers alleged that “these are complaints female coaches face when they coach the same way successful male coaches do.”
In December of that year, Hilt-Costello’s lawsuit says she informed the athletic department she would not pursue another contract, citing “emotional distress” from the way Smitheran had dealt with her.
“She loved the job, she loved the student-athletes, she loved being a tennis coach and to just have this new administration come in and use all of these things to try and criticize her, it was really devastating for her,” Lyon said.
Cook, the university spokesperson, declined to comment on the specific allegations laid out in the lawsuit or say if the university investigated Hilt-Costello’s claims before her retirement.
“Coach Hilt-Costello’s remarkable and successful career of more than a quarter of a century at Long Beach State should not have ended this way,” Lyon said.