As police are investigating a Denver high school’s incident involving a cheer coach forcing members into painful splits, another school admits they fired the coach for the same reason last year.
Ozell Williams, who was placed on leave from East High School this week as an investigation is carried out, began the job as the school’s cheerleading coach in June. Previously, Williams helped Boulder High School coaches as a choreographer and tumbling coach in 2015. Boulder brought him back to help with a four-day cheerleading camp in 2016, but he was fired on the third day of practice for implementing the controversial splits training method.
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“One of our coaches has gotten a complaint in terms of the technique being used,” Randall Barber, director of communications for the Boulder Valley School District, tells PEOPLE. “When one of the assistance coaches observed him using the technique in camp, they discontinued his services with the school.”
Williams made headlines this week as disturbing video footage surfaced from East High School’s cheerleading camp in June. In the clip, he presses on freshman cheerleader Ally Wakefield’s shoulders and instructs her teammates to hold down her arms and legs, making it impossible to move from the split position. In the 24-second video sent to KUSA, the girl screams “please, stop” nine times and cries out in pain. The network says it received multiple videos which show a total of eight teenage girls being forced into the splits.
Though Williams told KUSA he learned the technique growing up, other experts in the field says this practice of hyperextending the athletes’ range of motion is not commonplace.
“I was appalled when I saw the video,” says Jim Lock, the executive director of the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators and former University of Kentucky cheerleader told PEOPLE. “It’s pretty clear this girl is in a lot of pain, and she is specifically asking them to stop. It should have immediately ended at that point.”
He insists that this harsh, potentially harmful technique is not taught by professionals in the cheer world. “Stretch slow and methodically, and you’ll increase and improve your stretching,” he explains. “It’s not something you force. The type of techniques taught in clinics around the country never includes forcing someone to the point of pain.”
Ally’s mother Kirsten Wakefield addressed the incident, as well as her daughter’s injuries, in an email to East High School’s athletic director on June 15. She said Ally has experienced torn muscle tissue, damaged ligaments and a pulled hamstring as a result of Williams’ unconventional methods.
“My husband and I would like to know what the administration is going to do about my daughter’s injury and how it happened,” Kirstin wrote in the email. School officials did not respond to the mother and an investigation did not begin until August 23, one day after the video was anonymously sent to and released by KUSA.
Now, six school administrators have been placed on leave, including Williams and the school principal, as an investigation is carried out.
“If there is any good to come out of this, if there are coaches, athletes, or parents that still think this is acceptable, they’ll now understand it’s not,” Lock told PEOPLE. “If a parent or cheerleader feel they’re being asked to do something that isn’t right, they should address it with a coach. If it’s not addressed properly, they should bring it up with their administration. We hope people continue to speak up and realize this type of training is not okay.”
Williams is also under fire for claiming to be an Olympic athlete in his bio for Mile High Tumblers Foundation, a youth program he runs, though the U.S. Olympic Committee has no record of his participation in any Olympic events.
“He is not named on an Olympic roster, he is not named as an athlete or an alternate within the last five to ten games,” a spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee says. “We have no record of him being on an Olympic team. USA Gymnastics also does not have a record of him being on an Olympic team or even being invited to an Olympic trial event. That is confirmed.”
