After four, yes four coaches on a youth football team were found to have criminal backgrounds, parents are (shockingly) coming to the coaches’ defense.
Derrick Jenkins, whose son plays on the team put it simply, “What happened in the past is the past.”

Parents claim that the coaches’ pasts allow them to give players honest advice about staying out of trouble.

Parent Andrea Walls explained, “I know for a fact that they’ve just really touched lives that probably would have went other directions, and I think their experience has made them better coaches.”

The coaches’ criminal records include convictions for selling cocaine, possession of cocaine, weapons offences, driving with a suspended license, grand theft, and larceny. The offenses themselves are not as far in the past at you might hope, either. One coach had records from last year, and another was recently in prison.

The Suncoast Youth Football Conference, requires only a search of the state sex offender registry. It catches would-be coaches who are sexual offenders, but not those who have committed crimes that are not sexual in nature.

The group’s four coaches have 45 arrests among them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.