Cortland Standard .net

By SARAH VABER
Staff Reporter
svaber@cortlandstandard.net
GROTON — Parents said Monday they are concerned the Groton Junior-Senior High School boys’ locker room may still be unsupervised after school and before sports practices despite an incident there in the fall that led to criminal convictions for two football players.
Students are not supervised in the locker room after classes are dismissed at about 2:45 p.m. until practices start at 3 p.m. or later, Rob Neff and Melissa Goodsell, parents of Groton athletes, said after the Board of Education meeting.
Neff said he has a son who plays junior varsity baseball this season and Goodsell said she has a son playing on the varsity baseball team.
Both parents were part of a group of about 15 parents and students who gathered on the school sidewalk after the meeting to discuss the supervision issue and their desire to see former varsity football coach Jeff Lewis rehired. The group, which included Lewis, did not bring up the supervision issue to the board at its meeting.
Interim Superintendent of Schools J. D. Pabis this morning denied the school’s locker room is left unsupervised.
“The locker rooms are locked,” Interim Superintendent of Schools J. D. Pabis said. “When the Phys Ed teacher leaves, the locker rooms are locked until the coach opens them.”
Coaches should not be unlocking the locker room and leaving it open for other students who have practices at later times to get into, Pabis said.
“But I do not believe that is happening,” he said, adding coaches have been reminded of the school’s procedure.
But parents say their children have witnessed first-hand locker rooms lacking supervision.
Both Neff and Goodsell cited concerns that supervision had not increased since a Sept. 10 incident that led two varsity football players to plead guilty to first-degree harassment, a misdemeanor.
The incident occurred during unsupervised time in the locker room, Neff said.
“Now, two sports (seasons) later, six months later, there’s still unsupervised time in the locker room,” he complained.
“I don’t understand why precautions weren’t taken,” Goodsell said. “From what I see of the gym area, kids just go through and hang out until whenever.”
The Sept. 10 incident occurred before the beginning of practice when the coaches had not arrived yet, Matt Gombas, a varsity football player, said after the Jan. 12 board meeting.
Goodsell said that when she was a cheerleader at Groton High School, students had to leave school property if practice did not start right away or sign into the library until the coach signed them out for practice.
Some coaches are not teachers and cannot arrive from their jobs to coach until after school lets out, Goodsell noted. Practices also start at various times, with baseball practice starting at 4:30 p.m., she said.
Supervision in the locker room before practices needs to be the responsibility of Athletic Director Billie Downs and Principal Laura Norris, Goodsell said.
Pabis said this morning that parents who have concerns about locker room supervision should approach someone at the district.
“I wish the parent had come to a school official,” Pabis said, adding any student who sees the locker room open should also approach an official or teacher. “That’s what we’re here for.”
Lewis said after the meeting that he informed Downs at the beginning of the year he would arrive from his job outside the district around 3 p.m. to let students change in the locker room before the 3:30 p.m. football practice.
It was not until this year, when the high school principal and athletic director positions were both filled with new people, that the school’s supervision practices changed, said Lewis, who was a football coach in the district for 22 years. Lewis said he was never told that students were no longer required to leave or remain supervised.
Parents and students in the group criticized the board for not rehiring Lewis as the varsity football coach.
The board opted not to ask Lewis and Assistant Coach Bobby Brull back for the 2015 football season. The district has advertised in the Cortland Standard it is seeking applications for the head coach position.
“All the players and the parents of the players are behind Coach Lewis right now because he’s been doing an excellent job,” said David De Bruyn, the father of varsity football player Nick De Bruyn. “So I think they ought to reinstate him.”
“He’s really a good coach,” said Nick De Bruyn, a 16-year-old sophomore. Lewis teaches players life lessons, and helps them with academics, De Bruyn added. “It’s really a shame the board (of education) is putting him through what they are putting him through as he really didn’t have anything to do with it (the Sept. 10 incident),” he said.
“We need Coach Lewis back,” Matt Gombas, 15, a sophomore who played varsity football in the fall, said Monday. “I think if we don’t get Coach Lewis back next year, a lot of kids will lose interest in our program.”
Gombas said he went door to door in January in the village seeking signatures for an online petition to reinstate Lewis.
Lewis said after the meeting that he intended to submit an application for the head varsity coach position before the March 20 deadline.
Lewis and Brull both asked for their jobs back during a public comment session of the March 3 board of education meeting, while Lewis also asked for the post at the Jan. 26 meeting.
“I will not go away on this,” Lewis told the board Monday, raising his voice during the public comment session.
Lewis said he was disappointed that board members had not spoken with him about the job situation and he called on the board members to resign.
“Shame on you for putting Groton through this,” he said.
Goodsell said she thought the district should rehire Lewis and then refocus on the supervision problem.
“The school just needs to stop pointing fingers and get down to what the real issue is, which is the lack of supervision in the locker room,” she said.