A high school football coach in Oklahoma faces a misdemeanor charge amidst claims of harassment and indecent behavior.
Phillip Koons, the head coach at Ringling High School (Okla.), has been accused of ‘outraging public decency’ in a court filing on Oct. 17, 2023. The charge of outraging public decency means that Koons is being charged with having committed an act “which openly outrages public decency…and is injurious to public morals.”
Koons is also the high school principal at Ringling.
The allegations made by attorneys and in local reporting create a picture of a football program that was being run on a culture of harassment, hazing and indecency.
According to News 9 in Oklahoma, “Koons made everyone do up downs naked in the turf locker room.” This led to injuries to several players on their private parts.
The allegations reported by News 9 also claim the use of homophobic and racial slurs.
In an interview with the Daily Beast, one of the attorneys for a student involved in these claims was very specific about the allegations.
“These boys were subjected to a cult-like environment where this guy would groom them, break them down to where they were at a point that they wanted to quit playing football, some of them wanting to commit suicide, and then would build them back up within that cult system and create a deal where he was the most important thing in their lives,” Tod Mercer, one of the attorneys involved in the case said in the interview with The Daily Beast.
“He would isolate them from their friends, from their family, even from their doctors.”