Group: Coaches mistreated female players

Girls on four sports teams in Douglas County high schools say they were mistreated by coaches, with allegations ranging from inappropriate language to sharing excessive personal information and forced exercise.

Tom Ahlborg and Dru Ahlborg, who work at the nonprofit Bullying Recovery Resource Center, spoke to the Douglas County School District board Tuesday night. They said the district hadn’t investigated the complaints thoroughly and called for the district to establish a department to investigate student allegations.

Some girls lost playing time or were demoted to junior varsity teams after they complained, and one athletic director who interviewed students said they weren’t there to bash the coach because he is a “good guy,” said Tom Ahlborg, the center’s director of advocacy.

“We do believe the problem to be systemic,” he said.

Superintendent Thomas Tucker said the district had brought in an outside investigator to look into the complaints.

“We take our students’ emotional and physical health very seriously,” he said.

Dru Ahlborg, the group’s executive director, said Tuesday night that 20 families with daughters at Chaparral, Douglas County and Rock Canyon high schools had reached out for help with what they considered bullying by coaches.

The center received calls Wednesday from one athlete at Castle View High School and one at Ponderosa High School, Tom Ahlborg said.

The Rock Canyon student decided not to continue pursuing her complaint, he said.

They alleged that one coach had called girls “whores” and another, who was in recovery from opioid addiction, used guilt to prevent girls from quitting the team by telling them they were the only reason he was still alive.

Other allegations included that a coach yanked a girl’s ponytail and that others were forced to run stairs as a punishment, told to play while injured or “set up to fail” after coaches had inflated their confidence.