CHICAGO — Once again, the Chicago Red Stars are making a major change, this time with someone in the front office who was only promoted a few months ago.
On Friday, the club announced that general manager Michell Lomnicki has been fired by the team’s Board of Managers for failing to disclose important information to them.
“Yesterday the board of the Chicago Red Stars ended Michelle Lomnicki’s employment effective immediately after learning about a lapse in judgment to not share important information with club leadership,” said the release from the club. “The board determined that it is in the best interest of the player, staff, and organization to part ways at this time”
Shortly after the release, a report from The Athletic’s Meg Linehan detailed how Chicago Empire FC, a youth affiliate of the Red Stars who had ties to Lomnicki, had employed coach Craig Harrington. He has been suspended for two years by the NWSL in January of this year for making inappropriate sexual and objectifying comments to players while Utah Royals FC manager.
She had not informed the club of the connection between Empire FC and Harrington, which reportedly led to her termination.
Harrington was an assistant coach with the Red Stars under manager Rory Dames, who has been permanently banned from coaching in the NWSL after multiple abuse claims were brought against him over the last few years.
Lomnicki, who was a defender for the Red Stars from 2013 through 2015, joined the club in 2020 as director of camps and clinics. In January 2022, she was promoted to associate general manager of the Red Stars and remained in that position for a year.
It marks another major change for the club that, like the rest of the NWSL, has undergone a reckoning after multiple claims of abuse of players have been brought up since 2021. Owner Arnim Whisler is in the process of selling the club after two separate abuse reports done on the NWSL – one from the league itself and another from Sally Yates – found he didn’t properly act on abuse claims made against Dames.
