https://www.cbsnews.com/news/forced-splits-cheerleading-denver-no-charges-coach-ozell-williams/
I can’t believe this isn’t criminal assault! I hope the parents file a civil suit for damages and medical bills!
Are you freaking kidding me?
I coached and supervised coaches for years. If any of my coaches every purposely caused immense pain like that, you’d bet I’d have called the cops. If I did it, I’d hope somebody would’ve called them on me.
How horrible.
That child was screaming in agony. If that was my daughter, that coach would have been forcibly split himself, by my H who, up until a few years ago, could execute a mighty fine split himself.
Disgusting.
The parents all have lawyers. They are all filing suit against the coach and the school district.
Good.
Wow, I was sure the coach would go to jail for assault and battery. I thought I read when the story first broke that the girl was injured as a result of that incident, and needed medical care?
Civil is the way to go especially if they want medical bills covered. It sounded like at three people got fired because of the coaches controversial “training.” Assault is a pretty high bar legally but I am glad the prosecutor looked into it and the incident got media attention.
I agree that civil is the way to go because it will hit the school district where it lives, in its pocket. It’s covered by insurance, but the premiums could go up or it could be dropped by its carrier and forced to go into a more expensive coverage pool. Criminal charges are harder to make stick and only the coach himself would likely face any jail time. Better to cost him a job or two until he changes his ways, in my opinion. It would be nice if he was hit with a punitive damages award that he had to pay out of his own pocket. The medical costs can likely be covered by the district’s health insurance without a law suit. In my SD, it your child was hurt at school, the district’s coverage paid your OOP expenses, which in one of my cases was over $5K because my son broke his ankle in gym class.
True for us too but my son’s physical therapy payments were very inadequate after a football injury. If pushing on shoulder on a person working on splits is a practice even if not recommended by other coaches it would be impossible to prosecute assault. There are bad trainers and bad coaches and costing this one future jobs is punitive. And other people lost their jobs for making a bad hiring decision…that is pretty punitive in my opinion.
Eons ago, my mom was a basketball cheerleader at her VERY small up-north parochial school. She never could do the splits, but she really wanted to be able to do them. No one forced her, thank goodness, but she really pushed herself & finally was able to do the splits mid-court during a time-out. And she could not get up … she was stuck, and she said it really hurt. She never forgot that … talked about it when reminiscing at the end of her life. She never forgot the pain & humiliation of being stuck out there in the splits in front of a packed gym. I can’t even imagine what psychological damage young ladies forced into painful splits by their coach will carry with them through their lives.
The principal was fired because he did not do his due diligence on this guy before hiring him. According to press reports he was fired the previous year from a high school in Boulder for the exact same thing. He also claimed to be an Olympic Athlete but the U.S.Olympic Committee refutes that claim saying they have no record of him whatsoever.
The young girl actually was injured according to an email sent to the school by her mother. The email explained that a doctor who examined her said she had torn muscle tissue and damaged ligaments in her leg, as well as a pulled hamstring as a result of being forced into the splits. She has to see a physical therapist for treatment.
If continuing to lay hands on someone that is crying and begging for you stop is not considered assault, regardless of circumstance or “practice”, then I have an issue with assault laws.
Unfortunately, this practice is extremely common in cheerleading, dance, and gymnastics. If you want to see a particularly brutal version, go to Youtube and google “china gymnastics training children”. Here’s a less brutal video of a young rhythmic gymnast’s training: https://youtu.be/ndC9NDu1eRk - but the child is still crying with the coach telling her she should be tough and willing to suffer.
Of course there are many videos that show the appropriate approach to improving flexibility gradually over a period of months. Any kind of flexibility training will be painful, but it shouldn’t cause extreme pain. Trying to force or push someone into the splits when they are obviously incapable of doing them is absurd. I have no doubt that these videos are where many inexperienced coaches get their ideas on how to develop flexibility - and what led to this incident.
Common sense has gone out the window these days.
I am confused. I read that this incident was taped by the victim’ mother. Is that correct? Could you know something is wrong enough to record it, but not step in to stop it? If someone was abusing my kid, I would start yelling, not recording.
No, the mother was not present. I believe the daughter showed the mother the video in their car as they were driving back from the camp.
It was recorded by two different cheerleaders.
Got it. Maybe they confused the mother turning it in with recording it. The thought that she had recorded it made absolutely zero sense to me. Good for those girls to record it.
The coach was fired. The principal of the school retired. Five asst principals were disciplined for not turning in the tape or reporting the complaint. The asst principal who was also serving as AD resigned.
This is really not a good situation. It is an inner city high school with the best AP program in the city, but it still has many of the problems that urban high schools have. Huge socio-economic divide. Having to get a new principal and several assistants without notice is hard at the beginning of the school year.