California cheerleading coach suspended for allegedly forcing teammates to fight
A California cheerleading coach has been suspended for allegedly forcing two of her charges to fight over a boy, according to a KTLA report out of Los Angeles.
The Palisades Charter (Los Angeles, Calif.) High cheerleading coach isn't mentioned by name, but a junior on the team accused her mentor of turning on music and moving a desk to set the stage for a brawl that resulted in at least one black eye, the report said.
"I felt embarrassed and humiliated and ashamed," said Cimone Holloway, the Palisades Charter junior who explained her side of the incident to KTLA. "I’ve never been in a fight in my life. I didn’t want to fight."
Holloway told KTLA that she alerted her coach to a teammate's bullying over what we can only assume was a mutual infatuation, so the coach encouraged them to fight it out before a practice in January -- twice.
"Another cheerleader broke up the fight," Holloway added. "I thought that it was over and the coach said, ‘Do you guys want to go another round? In that fight, I tripped over my foot and was on the floor and she was on top of me and again punching me. And sometime during that fight, she kicked me in the forehead.”
To make matters worse, Holloway claimed, the coach kept her from cheering in the next game, encouraged her to lie about the incident to her mother Tonya Humes and made the remaining cheerleading teammates "pinky-swear" not to tell the secret. Apparently, the first rule of cheerleading fight club is you don't talk about cheerleading fight club.
When Humes contacted the coach via text message, she was told that Cimone "came down from a stunt and caught an elbow," KTLA reported. However, the family claims video of the footage exists, so they have reportedly hired lawyers to get to the bottom of an incident that was apparently not severe enough for the police to log in a report.
The dean alerted Humes via email that the coach has been suspended and administrators have intervened, although Holloway has since transferred schools, the report said.
In terms of cheerleading coach scandals, if true this may be the most egregious. Another Californian was reportedly fired for posing in Playboy in 2009 and a Houston cheer leader was removed for dubbing her team a bunch of "highfalutin heifers" last winter.
Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Visit RivalsHigh or connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
