Of course they are wrong for not renewing him without a valid reason. It's incompetence. He's the best coach they've ever had and one of the best (if not the best) in the WPIAL.
The way they went about is even worse, just slimy. I don't support incompetence and reprehensible behavior. Apparently you have no problem with it.
I fired a coach once. A full-time ice hockey coach (well getting paid full time money while pretty much working part-time). There was a no-cause bi-directional out-clause in the contract, with a notice period.
We decided to terminate the contract because financial projections showed we couldn't afford it and would bankrupt the club by continuing in that arrangement.
The club had a sweet deal going for a while where there was a verbal agreement that the rink would pay 40%, and the senior men's team would pay 20% of the cost. All thought that an increase in players would bring in the money to cover all of this. The rink expected the coach to coach the very beginners players in a program run by the rink. The coach delegated that to someone else (unpaid) who didn't always turn up, and that volunteer was being investigated for grooming young players and was a suspected (but not confirmed thank goodness--think we intervened in time) pedophile. Well, the rink couldn't afford to continue to pay, nor did they want to. They terminated the verbal agreement (that at that point several years after the agreement, one party involved had died, and the other couldn't remember the specifics other than the dollar figure!).
The senior men's team had a change in management, and wanted to go in a different direction for coaching. That and they never had the money to pay in the first place and owed for two past seasons.
And the player numbers that were supposed to increase to offset the cost were declining. There were bullying concerns and the board basically spent more than half of each meeting managing complaints either directed at the coach or generated by the coach. The coach wanted to know why we didn't raise more money to cover his cost, and I flat out told him it was because we spent all of our time dealing with his drama.
So the only agreement in writing was with the club having to pay the full freight of the cost, and with the outside funding not materialising, we had to let him go. I met with him to see if we could agree to reduce to part time pay per hour type of arrangement. That was when I was told he would be suing me and the club and had been advised that we were breaking employment law and would be held liable. I took that to mean there was no room to negotiate. The board agreed to terminate the agreement without cause and gave notice as required in the contract. There would have been plenty of "cause" to go around, but cause is contestable. No cause is not contestable. And we really didn't have the money.
This guy tried to salt the earth on the way out. He lied to many and he spoke freely, but the club could not rebut any of it due to the confidentiality clause in the contract. People were defending him against non-existent allegations as he was spreading this misinformation. The yearly financial reports were public information and posted on the web as per law. Hell, we posted our meeting minutes on our website. The financial concerns were clearly in there. Very few people can actually understand the difference between assets, receivables, and cash. We looked OK on paper, but had receivables that just weren't going to materialize. The national federation owed us $40k, and they didn't have the money at the time. The membership called a special meeting and in this meeting a certain member misrepresented the financial situation and accused the board and specifically the treasurer of embezzling the money. He wanted the club to sue the rink and the senior men's team for the money they did not have, and for terminating the verbal contract that nobody could even remember the specifics.
So I guess the short version and the point of this is that in such matters, one party tends to be free to control the information flow while the other party is required by contract or law to not comment on the situation. The PR board had their reasons. Appropriate or not, they elected to not renew the contract. EK made their letter public. PR cannot really say much. So EK controls the public narrative, but there may be information that we don't know.
When I look back at the coaching firing debacle I went through I realize that I was significantly hindered by not being able to get some control of that narrative. The board could not ever comment on the situation. We completely took the high ground and got ground into dust for doing so. In retrospect, another approach could have been to place some leaks out there that there was an ongoing investigation into a pedophile coach. That would have made things so much easier, but really would have caused long lasting damage to the coach and to the club. I actually liked that coach. My son is a better hockey player because of him.
But when things become unworkable, sometimes you take one for the team. The PR admins seem to be doing this. The full truth will probably not come out for a while. I doubt they didn't renew him solely based on winning big. Angry parent? Perhaps. It happens.
Funny thing is that as PR admins drop, EK might be the only one left standing.