The Coach, the A-student, and the Incident
Authority figures are supposed to be trustworthy, especially educators. Many times, they use their position of power to intimidate students until the mask slips & their predatory behavior is exposed.
I’ve recently seen a bit of an uptick in followers, so first and foremost- welcome! Thank you for your interest in my Substack. I have had quite a bit going on in the background recently, hence not being able to post any content here. As I sit with my rapidly cooling coffee, and before the day is in full swing I thought I’d try to drop a little something here. Please be sure to like the post and leave a comment if you enjoy what you’ve read!
It was a day much like any other. I was sitting in my 7th-period English Honors class looking over a completed worksheet while the other students worked diligently on whatever the assignment was for the day. I had a 101 in the class at the time, which I didn’t even know was a possibility until I saw it printed on the most recent report card. This was the same year I’d won a statewide essay and been honored locally in the paper having received an award, savings bond, and recognition at a ceremony attended by the Board of Education, mayor, governor of the state, and other respected individuals in the community.
Because of this accomplishment for the school system, my last class of the day was one of leisure and boredom. I was allowed to do “busy work” while the rest of the class actually did whatever the daily assignment was. Many times teachers would come by and ask for me to be pulled out to work on assignments or homework for their students. I would walk up to the library and sit and one of the computer desks with whatever the task was from the teacher that day. Sometimes it would be a test I would be typing out. Other times it was homework, study guides, permission slips, and letters to parents. All kinds of things.
I was chosen for this kind of clerical work for the staff for two reasons. #1: I was a fast typist and could get whatever the document was turned around to the teacher far before the last bell would ring. And #2: because I had such a high score in the English class, I wasn’t doing the work of the rest of the class and often reading a book or doing whatever it took to stay busy while the hands on the clock took their time getting to the top of the hour. Rather than have me sit doing nothing, my skills were being put to work. I didn’t mind. It made the time go by much faster.
On this particular day, I was sitting at my desk and once again a teacher came by to “borrow” Haley. My English teacher met the other teacher at the door to discuss particulars surrounding what was needed. She called me up to the front where I was asked to help type out a basketball roster for the head coach at the time. I obliged, grabbed my things since I wouldn’t be returning to class, and walked into the hallway where my task was explained to me.
After understanding what was needed, I walked to the library. This was a fairly simple list that was needed so it didn’t take long for me to complete it. I asked the librarian for a hall pass to return the document to the coach. At the time this was a big deal. There had been lots of students who had been roaming the halls aimlessly trying to avoid actually being in class. Oftentimes they’d ask to go to the bathroom, take their time getting there, and then take the scenic route back to the classroom. Sometimes that meant wasting time on a different hall from the class they were currently in. So at the time, you weren’t to be caught by staff without a hall pass. It didn’t matter who sent you where through the halls, you had to have this signed permission slip to be traveling.
After receiving my hall pass, I took off towards the gym. This coach’s office was one of two on either side of the stage in the gym. A lot of schools’ basketball gyms came equipped with a stage for performances or award ceremonies. On the left was the female coach’s office. She’d been a coach there for decades and loved by all. Fantastic woman. On the right side of the stage was this male coach’s office. I’d never been there before as he’d never been my PE coach, nor my health teacher. At the time the coaches had health classes through the week in a designated classroom. I say all this to say, I knew who this coach was but was never a student of his.
I remember entering the empty gym and hearing my footsteps echo. I walked up to the coach’s office door where he was sitting at his desk. There was one window off to the left that looked out at the entrance of the school. Directly outside the window was the walkway and the bike rack. His office had sports equipment in corners as well as leaning up against a file cabinet. His desk was a mess of scattered papers and manilla folders.
I knocked and was waved in. He seemed engrossed in whatever papers he was holding at the time and barely looked up to see who had knocked. I walked up to his desk and handed over copies of the basketball roster I’d printed off on the copy machine. After looking over them and seeming to approve, he thanked me. I asked him for a hall pass to return to class.
There was a full-length mirror next to the file cabinet off to the right of his desk against the wall. I remember waiting for what seemed like an eternity for him to finish what he was doing and write my hall pass on a sticky note so that I could leave and head back to class until the final bell for the day rang.
I was standing in front of the full-length mirror and making small talk with him while waiting for this sticky note to be written up. At this time, I was already having a lot of issues with my back. I was 13 years old and hitting a growth spurt, but wasn’t able to even touch the wooden contraption used to measure the “sit and reach”. Just a week prior was the health fair where students’ physical abilities had been recorded. There were all kinds of different things that had been measured like how fast you could run a mile or how many pull-ups you could do in a minute.
The sit and reach required students to sit with both legs straight out in front of them and their feet pressed up against this wooden box. You had to reach both arms out, hands one above the other, and see how far you could reach forward across the box. The coaches would be next to the box to measure the length the students were able to reach. When it was my turn, I wasn’t able to even touch the box. I’d seen other students reaching with their hands far across the top with ease. I was discouraged and not sure why I couldn’t even hit the box at all.
I can remember having been discouraged the day of the health fair and going home trying to stretch and touch my toes, either one would have sufficed, but I couldn’t. I had stood in front of my own mirror at home and noticed one of my hips was slightly higher than the other. Maybe this had something to do with why I wasn’t as flexible as the other kids. Maybe it was because I was still growing. I didn’t know. I just knew I felt embarrassed not being able to do it while my peers looked on. It bothered me. I would find out shortly after that I had degenerative disc disease. It was not just all in my mind. I had a serious condition that would get progressively worse as I got older. It would affect a lot of my physical activity and hinder much of what I was able to do day to day.
Standing in front of this mirror in the coach’s office I was discussing this with the coach who was still sitting at his desk fumbling around with papers. I brought up the fact that I’d noticed one hip higher than the other and asked if that could be the reason why I wasn’t able to do the sit and reach at the recent health fair. This was the first time he had looked up at me since the quick glance up at the knock on the door. I could see him looking at me through the reflection but didn’t think much of it. This was a health teacher. He had studied the human form and maybe he had some answers for me. I can’t remember what he said or what advice he may have given at the time. This was the moment I started to disassociate. I’d been in a similar position before. I knew what I needed to do to get through it. Brace yourself.
It wasn’t the first time I had had to disassociate. I knew how to embrace it and sink deeper and deeper into the fog while every second felt like hours. Things from this point on seemed to be running at 0.25x speed. Every second was excruciatingly slow and drawn out.
I remember seeing him stand up at his desk and start to walk over to where I was standing in front of the mirror, back to him. He stood behind me, a strong and beefed-up black man who towered over me at 6’ 6”. I was wearing a black and white striped shirt I’d received at Christmas from my grandmother, paired with a pair of my Mom’s white button-fly jeans. My mother was much taller than myself too standing at 6 feet tall. The jeans were really too big and far too long for me, but we didn’t have much growing up, and borrowing clothes wherever you could get them was a thing. I’d often beg friends to let me borrow their clothes just to have something new to wear to school.
Standing directly behind me I felt him press his entire body up against my back and my butt. I remember the pressure of his huge body up against my small frame and freezing. I was terrified. My mind was racing at a million miles a minute. Part of my brain was trying to calm me down, telling me this is a health teacher, he’s just trying to help you understand what’s wrong with your back. These thoughts were overrun by fear and anxiety. This wasn’t good. He IS a teacher and coach. Why is he this close to me? Should he be touching me at all?
He put his huge hands on both of my hips and was saying something, I have no idea what, but it had to do with one being higher than the other as I’d just stated to him. I remember him looking at the mirror from behind me sort of measuring where the top of each of my hips were with his hands. This didn’t last long before he actually “shanked” my pants. They fell to my ankles, with one of the buttons from the button-fly jeans belonging to my mother flying off. I heard it hit somewhere on the ceramic floor as I stood in disbelief. I was now staring at myself in a shirt and panties with my pants around my shoes.
I was now totally immobilized and began to check out from what was happening. As I said, I’d had to disassociate before just to make it through the incident. This felt very similar. Though the circumstances were nothing alike, I felt powerless and at the time braced myself for being completely taken advantage of. Was this grown man, a teacher and coach about to do what I think he is?
He then grabbed my hips and quickly turned me around to face him. I remember almost falling since I couldn’t really move my feet now confined and entangled in the pants bunched up above them. My face was now staring at the middle of this huge man’s chest. I could see out of the window just beyond him. It was a bright and sunny day. There was the bike rack. No one was walking in or out of the school. I could see where the staff parked. Green grass. Birds.
He then pulled me into him, hard, hands still firmly wrapped around my hips. He was strong. Very strong. His hands were so big they could easily touch each other on the other side of my back. Was this really happening? He leaned down and planted an equally hard and strong kiss right on my lips. It was beyond aggressive. He was twice my size. I stared out that window fixated on the bike rack frozen in disbelief and fear. Just as quickly as this had happened, it ended. He turned from me and walked back over to his desk and fumbled around the mess of papers strewn about on it. I remember bending down to get my pants which was a truly difficult task for me with my back issues. To this day, I can’t do it. I have to sit to get my pants on. I have to cross one leg across the other to put my socks on. Even that is difficult and I have to pull my calf across with both hands.
I bent down and grabbed them, pulling them up with shaking hands and trembling legs. I buttoned what I could of them. The top button was gone, completely snapped off. Being that these were my mother’s pants, I needed that top button to keep them on my body. I had to now hold my pants up with one hand. I stood there shaking while he took his time finding a sticky note to produce a hall pass for me to return to class. No one said anything. The only sounds were birds chirping right outside the window and muffled voices from the halls outside the gym.
He turned and handed me the hall pass and said, “Here you go.” That was it. I walked out of the gym and down the long hallway headed back to my classroom. Sticky note in my left hand and my pants around my waist in the right. I remember having to navigate my way back to the class through what seemed like a pinhole. It was like walking through a dense and foggy tunnel.
I made it to the doorway of my classroom and as soon as I entered, my teacher looked over at me and knew something bad was wrong. I walked over to the trashcan and threw the post-it note hall pass in, walked straight to my desk, and sat down. At this point, I think I was still just running on adrenaline and trying to process what had just happened. I took the flannel shirt that I’d left at my desk when I went up to the library and tied it around my waist just to keep my pants up and not alert any of my peers as to the bizarre situation. The teacher walked over to my desk and asked me to step out into the hall. She shut the door to the classroom and immediately said, “What happened?”.
I went into a full-blown panic attack. There were only a few minutes left in the day and I couldn’t get out of that school fast enough. I can’t remember what excuse I gave her but I couldn’t really even get anything out even if I’d wanted to. She knew something was wrong, but I’m sure what had happened would never have crossed her mind. I just wanted to get away from the situation as fast as I could. Everything happened so fast, yet so slow and I hadn’t processed what I’d just experienced. I didn’t really even know where to start to explain it to her.
The bell rang and I rushed into the class, grabbing my bookbag and jutting out the front door for the pick-up line. I waited as a few tears ran down my face, pacing, and avoiding the friends I’d normally talk to while waiting for our parents to pick us up. I aimlessly walked around in a daze, my mind both racing and going completely numb. As my mom’s car approached I all but ran to it and got in. I immediately burst into tears, still shaking and hyperventilating. It took me several blocks before I could catch my breath and explain what had just happened to my mom.
She was equal parts concerned and enraged, as expected. We made it home and I went straight to my room which had a full bathroom. I stripped down and got in the shower. I stood there crying until the water went cold. Why was I continually being taken advantage of? Why was my body seemingly a magnet for predators? Why me?
I got out and got dressed. I called for my mother and showed her the button-fly of her pants and apologized for ruining them. She had told me that morning that nothing better happen to them while I borrowed them for the day. I was worried she would be upset with me over the pants. She wasn’t. She took them from me and after inspecting where the button had been ripped from the jeans, folded them up nicely. (The button was later recovered behind the file cabinet in his office and used in the case against him.)
I sat on a chair in my room and repeated every detail I could remember to my mom. This would have to be repeated yet again once my father got home from work. At some point that night, a phone call was made to the home of the school’s principal. It just so happened that the principal was an old childhood friend of my father’s. A conversation ensued, but in the other room and I didn’t hear what was said. My father got off the phone and returned to my room telling me that there would be an emergency meeting before school started tomorrow in the office. Mom called her work and said she’d be in late the next day, as did my Dad.
I didn’t sleep much that night. I remember putting on headphones that were attached to my walkman and cranking Nine Inch Nails as far as it would go and just laying in bed staring up at the ceiling. I’m pretty sure I listened to Pretty Hate Machine 30 times that night, returning to the intro song the second the entire album ran out.
Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life? At the age of 13, I’d already been sexually assaulted, raped, and had other uncomfortable advances by grown men. Is this what would continue to happen to me? How could I protect myself from it happening again? What the fuck is wrong with men? Is every man like this? Will the boys in my class grow up to do similar things to girls? Who do I trust? Certainly not adult men. What was I supposed to do returning to school? What was I supposed to do if I saw him in the hallways or when I had to go to the gym? What was going to happen in the morning when we went to the office?
The sun was now beginning to rise and push its way through the curtains and onto my bed. It was time to get dressed and meet with the principal at school. I don’t remember much of getting there but I rode in the backseat with my dad driving and mom in the passenger seat. We made it to the school and parked right up front in staff parking. The school was empty except for the teachers arriving with their lunches in tow. We went into the office and announced we had an appointment with the principal. We all sat in the lobby until we were eventually called into his office.
My father and the principal chummed it up after words were exchanged about not liking having to meet under these circumstances. The principal explained that he wanted to hear my story in its entirety, but to wait until the coach arrived. He’d spoken with the coach after my dad’s phone call the previous night. He would soon be joining the meeting.
This obviously caused me a lot of anxiety. This would be the first time I’d seen him following the incident. Not only that, but I was going to have to go over the details with the man who assaulted me in the same room. I was overwhelmed and once again disassociated until he eventually arrived.
We sat for a while in leather chairs, waiting. A knock on the door. The principal called out for him to enter, and in he came. He smiled as he entered, looking over at both of my parents and greeting them with a handshake. How dare he? He looked over at me after the handshakes and I immediately was paralyzed once again with fear. There was no smile from him when looking at me, but he looked smug. You could see in his eyes that he was there to put on a show. He sat down and I was made to recount the events from moment to moment.
This man sat and denied it to both of my parents and the principal. I’d offered very specific details, including the button that flew off my pants. My mother got really upset at one point screaming at him. “She has straight As!,” “She’s not even a student of yours, why would she lie?” “What incentive does she have to make this up?”
She was right, of course. There was nothing beneficial to me at all to have fabricated something like this and with precise details. Even 30 years later, I can still remember tiny details of that day. My story never changed. Nothing was resolved during the meeting. The coach was asked to leave the office, which he did. We stayed behind and discussed with the principal what the next step was. The principal was very close to this coach outside of school and seemed to almost take his side. He understood the weight of the situation, but at the same time was not giving satisfactory responses to my parents, or me as to what would happen moving forward with this coach. He explained that the coach would leave at lunchtime that day and be put on paid leave until the principal decided what to do long-term.
After the meeting, I went to class. I saw the coach twice before lunchtime in the hallways and he cut me a death stare filled with rage. He was pissed. Each time I saw him I’d rush as fast as I could to get away from his gaze. I didn’t see him the rest of the day and assumed he’d gone home. My parents were contacted at some point that day by the school board who also wanted to speak to us.
A meeting was arranged for the following morning and I was asked to be present as well. Once again, my parents took off part of the day from work to handle this with me. After making it over to the Board of Education building for the county, we were ushered into a room with a long wooden desk. Ten or so people sat around the table while I was forced to once again go over every minute detail as the secretary took notes. I was asked many questions by people I’d never met before. The secretary taking notes just so happened to live next to my grandmother and was made aware of the situation the previous night after speaking with my grandmother.
I remember seeing tears fall from her face as she took these notes, watching me struggle to get the words out and having to ask me a few times to speak up. We left that day with no more answers. A few days passed and my parents received another phone call from the board director. They’d looked over his file and found eight other reports that were similar to mine spanning over ten years. Many were worse than my own, but eight other middle school girls had reported him for being inappropriate with them. How long was the school board aware of this behavior? Had he been disciplined in the past for these incidents? Why was he still allowed to teach co-ed sports?
This was impossible for me to understand, and even at 13, I was appalled that nothing had been done to prevent this behavior from happening again. The school board informed us that they would be sending my report along with the others to the state superintendent for review. More days passed, and another phone call came and this time it was good news. They’d revoked his license to teach in the state. He would never again be able to be in an educational setting with children.
I would return to school and in the passing weeks be berated in the locker room by nieces of this coach who were fellow students. I was called every name in the book. They were angry I had “done this to their uncle.” This went on for months. Eventually, things settled down, but there for a while, I was prepared to fight every time I entered the locker room. It never came to that, but I armored up in my mind each day before entering for gym, not knowing if today would be the day they decided to jump me.
Weeks would pass, even years. He owned a restaurant in town with his wife and I would often see his car in the parking lot when we drove by. A few times I saw him entering or exiting the building. This is where he was now.
Two years later, I started working at a chain restaurant in town as a hostess. One evening during my shift, in walked the coach. He was joined by the principal and both of their wives. Our eyes met and I took off to the back of the restaurant to let my manager know I wasn’t going to be seating them. After explaining the situation as fast as possible, the manager understood and sat them himself.
This particular manager was also a massive black man over 6 feet tall and every bit as muscular as the coach, maybe even a bit larger. The entire time they were sat at the table and eating their meal I still had to do my job. This meant walking through the restaurant several times to seat other guests, pick up menus, take drink orders, etc. I couldn’t fully avoid them and became increasingly angry with each pass by their table.
I could feel his eyes on me every time I came within his purview. I could feel the disgust and disdain from his wife too, who by then understood who I was. When the principal would see me, the old friend of my father’s it was as if nothing had ever happened. He was oblivious to my retraumatization of seeing the coach in the restaurant I worked in and my loss of respect seeing him buddy up to this coach after everything he knew. He now knew, if not before, of this predatory behavior going on for years in his school. How could he be hanging out with this type of man?
This happened half a dozen times in the three years I worked at this restaurant where he would come in with family or friends as a patron while I was on shift. Each time was a practice in maintaining my emotions, and it never got any easier. Eventually, I changed jobs and would only run into him a few times in public. These times were much easier to escape from, but every bit as traumatizing as before when I was unable to leave work.
Years passed, and it wasn’t until much later in my 20s that my father let it slip that they’d received a check from the school board to not go to the local media about the situation. Another huge slap in the face. Though my parents seemingly supported me through this situation, they’d accepted hush money. This was another example of times when I lost respect for my parents. I added it to the growing list of letdowns.
To this day, I’m affected by it all in ways that I wish I had more control over. This would not be the last time I was taken advantage of by a man who looked much like the coach. Dark skin, tall, stronger than me. I’ll leave that story for another time. The scars fade with time, but the experiences themselves are every bit as vivid as if they just happened. It’s wild what the human brain can do to compartmentalize trauma.
I was recently told by a friend who also suffers from PTSD that one of his psych docs had explained to him that the human brain deals with trauma by taking the incident itself and shattering it into a million pieces across memories and everyday thoughts as a coping mechanism. This way, the trauma is not a file in the brain’s file cabinet that is easily accessible. This is also why those who have experienced trauma can be doing everyday mundane tasks and be overwhelmed with memories of the events. A sudden rush, almost like a time machine putting the victim right back in the moment the trauma was inflicted.
Dealing with trauma, no matter the situation is as different for each individual as the details of the events themselves. The trauma I’ve experienced in my life doesn’t start or end with this event, unfortunately. I’m constantly finding my mind hijacked by traumatic events that have happened in my life that will consume me for as long as I’m willing to focus on them, which for me isn’t long.
I don’t like revisiting some of the things that have happened to me in my life, but my hope is that by writing about some of them I’m able to release it into the ether, and possibly help others in the process. My plan is to continue this series as my mind and heart will allow, and eventually use them as a blueprint for a book.
Your support means the world to me and makes writing these kinds of things worth revisiting the events. If you feel so inclined, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work and eventual book. Thanks for joining me as I walk through some of the more confusing and painful events in my life. I hope that you will stick with me through the process and continue to read and share my words.
Good on you, Haley, finding the courage to write your painful story. I was so admiring of your initial support and then so shocked at their betrayal of you by accepting the hush money. I hope you can have a greater understanding of human nature as a result of your experiences, to be able to still trust and learn more about who to trust so as to protect yourself more from people with weak moral values. Best wishes to you.
So sorry Haley!😢 I don’t understand how the principal could continue to associate with that man, says a lot about him too!