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Wayne Hills coach Chris Olsen speaks during the Wayne Board of Education last night. About 60 Wayne Hills players were in attendance to support their coach and teammates.
The Record |
Wayne Hills varsity football coach Chris Olsen, proving that winning games is more important to him than teaching life lessons, defended nine players charged in the brutal beating of two Wayne Valley students.
Actually, Olsen went further than that. He painted the accused rampaging juvenile delinquents as victims.
At last night’s board of education meeting, Olsen told the crowd that the accused players -- who cops say left one kid bloody and unconscious in the street -- “are guilty of playing football at Wayne Hills.”
In other words, the bullies are the victims.
That’s rich.
Let’s remind ourselves of the odds: Nine football players against two students.
And the charges: Aggravated assault.
Another point: Not once last night were the words “We’re sorry” uttered by Olsen.
And believe it or not, the spineless and morally bankrupt board of education fell for Olsen’s twisted sense of reality, and decided to reinstate the players, who had been banned by the superintendent from tonight’s playoff game against Paramus.
Olsen said the past 10 days, since the charges have come to light, have been a “nightmare.”
(Let’s pause here for a moment of silence for Olsen.)
He said his wife has been called bad names. He said e-mails have suggested that Olsen’s kid, who plays on he team, might have been involved in the beating, although Olsen says he wasn’t.
We don’t condone dragging Olsen’s wife and son into this mess, but Olsen misses the point: Times are a lot tougher for the victims. A mother of one of the victims says her son suffers from real nightmares, not the figurative one that Olsen, with a ridiculous sense of literary license, conjured last night
Why the nightmares? Because the victim recalls being kicked repeatedly as he lay on the ground.
Olsen’s next move should be to ask for a pay raise, because he is more than just a football coach. He’s now an investigator who is insisting there is evidence to indicate that some of the players charged might not have been involved
He’s a protest organizer, who paraded his players, dressed in their jerseys, into the meeting as props.
He’s a defense attorney, too. In his best Johnnie Cochran, Olsen called the process a “rush to justice.”
“Let’s say some of the boys, or all of them are found not guilty,” Olsen said. “What do we say to them? ‘We’re sorry’?”
Actually, yes. That’s exactly what we say.
We say, “We’re sorry, but there was enough evidence for police to charge you with a serious and violent crime, and to protect the integrity of the school, and to show that this issue is far more important than a football game or football season, we decided to make you sit out until the courts decided your guilt or innocence.”
The police chief says his investigators are meeting resistance because witnesses are afraid to talk. School officials should implore witnesses to come forth.
Olsen says the ordeal has made him question whether to continue coaching. With the lesson he is teaching his players here, we question it, too. He should bench the players.
Because if he doesn’t, any championship banner Wayne Hills might hang will be stained with blood.
