In a disturbing development from the ongoing investigation into the pool near-drowning of a trio of Alaska high school football players, eye witnesses have come forward to provide devastating details that the team’s coach may have played a direct role in endangering his student athletes.
As reported by Fairbanks NBC affiliate KTVF, the West Valley High School (Fairbanks, Ak.) aquatic training exercise that went wrong was based on a scene from the legendary football pop culture film ‘The Program’ in which the athletes were told to wear a sweater into a pool, take it off while treading water in the deep end and then put it back on.
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What made the West Valley squad’s attempt to recreate the training exercise particularly dangerous is that six of the team’s athletes reportedly didn’t know how to swim, but were still forced to get into the pool by their head coach, Roy Hessner.
Here’s the disturbing testimony in question from a pair of players on the team, who spoke to KTVF on the condition of anonymity.
“We got in on the wall, and then he [Hessner] told us to push off. For like the first five or like ten seconds everyone was like good I guess”, said Subject 1. “Then like 15 seconds in people were like just struggling, like struggling, struggling. There is kids screaming at the top of their lungs for help and everything and I was like kind of closer to the wall. So I just grabbed onto the wall because I just didn’t want to drown. So I got onto the wall and the lifeguard that was there she was trying to get in, but our head coach he told her, ‘It’s ok, they’ve got it on their own’. ”
“He already knew that kids couldn’t swim, and there were about three kids still holding onto the ledge”, said Subject 2. “They weren’t saying they didn’t want to do it, it was like they didn’t want to because before they got off the ledge it was already heavy with the sweater.”
“When I got out of the pool, and then I saw the lifeguard, she jumped in and then she came back up and she said she couldn’t grab him. At first I started crying, because I just didn’t know what was going on. They pulled one kid out and his arms were just stiff, he was just stiff. He wasn’t moving. I just started bawling my eyes out cause I genuinely thought he was dead. When they kept pulling more kids out, they pulled the last kid out I thought he was dead. Because he was purple and he wasn’t moving at all. Everyone there was pretty much bawling their eyes out and either mad or just sad that this was going on.”
If the accounts of the two student athletes in question are true, it would seem a virtual fait accompli that Hessner will not return to coaching at West Valley.
If the coach’s alleged initial actions weren’t bad enough, his lack of engagement once the situation became a bona fide crisis may have been worse. According to the two athletes interviewed, the coach never became involved with rescuing players from the pool, even though his entire coaching staff and the lifeguard on site were reportedly scrambling to remove players from the pool or calm down those who had already been taken to safety.
“If the coaches didn’t jump in I really think that some kids would have died then, or if the lifeguard didn’t jump in first kids would have died.” one of the teens told KTVF. Notably, when he referred to coaches, he was not including his head coach.
There has been no reaction as of yet from Hessner to the new allegations against him. That doesn’t necessarily indict him, but it also doesn’t lend his position any sympathy. Any coach willing to endanger his student athletes to the degree that Hessner allegedly did just to recreate a movie scene has larger questions that need to be answered.
