Videos of Girls Forced to Do Splits at Cheer Camp Lead to Coach’s Firing<br />The allegations had caused five officials from Denver Public Schools to be placed on leave—- including the coach, the principal<br />and the assistant principal at East High School — the school system’s superintendent, Tom Boasberg, said in a statement on Wednesday.<br />“Under no circumstances should a young person be forced to continue any activity beyond the point they have expressed the desire to stop.”<br />The announcement came after a widely circulated video showed a 13-year-old girl, an incoming freshman, being forced into a split, with one leg in front of her<br />and the other stretched behind her, even as she pleaded repeatedly to “please stop” and appeared to cry out in pain.<br />Days after the Denver Police Department announced that it was investigating allegations<br />that girls at a high school cheerleading camp had been forced into a painful splits position by their coach and teammates, the coach has been fired.<br />In a report this week about the investigation, KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Denver, said<br />that video and others that were sent anonymously to the station show eight cheerleaders being forced into the splits position.<br />On June 15, Kirstin Wakefield, the mother of the girl seen in the video, sent an email to the assistant principal,<br />who was later put on leave, asking what the administration planned to do about the incidents, according to KUSA.
