High School Sports Build Character

Two Mundelein (Ill.) High football players were referred to juvenile court after allegedly KO'ing a teammate while giving him a traditional "Birthday Beat Down."

Carl Elkins of Tampa, after his arrest on an armed-robbery charge, played in a Bloomingdale High football game with an electronic monitoring device on his ankle. Asked how such a thing could happen, his coach, David Bankston, reportedly said, "We just taped it up real good."

The father of two Clearwater ( Fla.) High football players, unhappy that one of his sons wasn't playing, ordered them to go home at halftime. When coaches pointed out that the boys' uniforms were school property, the father ordered the boys to strip. Police say he then threatened them and they pepper-sprayed him.

A Glendale, Ariz., woman was sentenced to 60 days in jail for threatening her daughter's cheerleading coach at Deer Valley High. "Don't forget the woman in Texas," said Mona Champion in a telephone call she made in 1996. "And what was it that she did? Oh, that's right, she had one of those other mothers killed, didn't she? Have a great day."

An Indianapolis seventh-grader who snapped a towel at friends in the shower said his gym teacher ordered him to drop and do 20 naked push-ups.

After cheerleaders at Beach High in Savannah were accused by some school board members of dancing luridly during their routines, Lisa Wilkins, a '94 Beach graduate explained to the AP, "When we shake, as African-Americans—because we're so healthy—it's going to shake a little harder than any Caucasian."

Although his Rialto ( Calif.) High football team was one win from its first conference championship, coach Don Markham said he was "not excited at all" because the kids on his team were "a bunch of jerks."