DENVER (AP) – A coach shown pushing cheerleaders down into splits on video in Denver was fired from another Colorado high school last year because of concerns about his techniques.
Ozell Williams is one of five school workers who have been placed on leave after the videos from East High School were made public and police opened a child abuse investigation.
Williams, the founder of a Denver-area tumbling school, worked as a contract employee with cheerleaders at Boulder High School during two stints in 2015 and 2016 to help them with choreography and tumbling. He worked with the cheerleaders once or twice a week in the fall of 2015 and also during a summer camp in 2016. He was dismissed three days into the four-day camp after a coach saw him using a technique similar to that seen in the Denver videos, said Randy Barber, a spokesman for the Boulder Valley School District.
A mother had also emailed the head coach, who was out of town at the time, about the technique, sometimes referred to as “breaking”, but he wasn’t fired until after another coach observed him using the technique with students.
Barber said administrators did not learn about the problems until this week when the videos were obtained and broadcast by Denver’s KUSA-TV.