An official investigative report obtained by the Reporter states several Bellevue High School football coaches and volunteers were found to have witnessed — and in some cases participated in — the harassment, intimidation and bullying of an unidentified student athlete.
The investigation was conducted over several weeks by attorney Shawn Ann Flood, in response to an incident where trainer Tracy Ford is alleged to have verbally threatened and cursed at a student before challenging him to fight. Ford and his employee Marc-Avery Airhart have since been removed from their positions as strength and conditioning trainers for the program and are not allowed on district property.
However, these charges were not addressed in the district’s self-reported WIAA off-season training and recruiting violations and subsequent probation and game suspensions for Head Coach Butch Goncharoff. Assistant coaches Matt Coombs, Connor Mawhinney, and Jeff Razore were also identified in the report as witnesses to and/or possible participants in the alleged harassment of a BHS student.
In the investigation documents, the student alleges that Mawhinney and Coombs were present while Ford cursed at students and challenged the student to fight on Deceber 9, 2014. The student’s father allegedly contacted Goncharoff that same day about Ford’s behavior, but never received a response.
The student also alleged that weeks later, he was called into the principal’s office at the Academic Institute, which he was attending at the time, where Razore told the student he would lose his scholarship if he left the Bellevue football team. Academic Institute Principal Jennifer Vice is reported to have left the office shortly after the student arrived, and declined to comment on the investigation.
“Jeff further said something to (redacted) to the effect that if he left Bellevue High School football, he would lose his scholarship at the Academic Institute,” the student alleged in the investigation report.
According to Flood’s report, Coombs and Mawhinney did nothing to intervene during the December 2014 meeting, and Mawhinney engaged in part of the harassing and escalated the interaction between Ford and the student. Razore also created the appearance of impropriety and violated generally recognized professional standards when he went to the student’s high school and met one-on-one with him.
Further, Goncharoff did not report the incident to school officials nor respond to the parent’s inquiry, as required by district regulations and the Coaches Handbook.
Goncharoff received a two-game suspension for his role in WIAA recruiting and inducement violations, but has not faced any disciplinary actions for his failure to report or quickly respond to the alleged harassment and the parent’s concerns.
Coombs and Mawhinney have also not received any disciplinary actions from the school district.
Neither Bellevue High School Principal Scott Powers nor district athletic director Jeff Lowell responded to requests for comment from the Reporter, nor has publicly addressed the coaches’ actions or steps the school will take to address, but district spokesperson Elizabeth Sytman said that there will be mandatory and ongoing trainings for all coaches throughout the program’s 3-year probationary period.
“I believe that the mandatory and ongoing training will make a difference. Please keep in mind, that we self-reported the violations, as a result of the information that was discovered during the investigation,” Sytman said. “All matters related to the findings have been addressed internally and with outside agencies.”
