- April 18, 2024
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In the nine seasons before 2014, when Robert Ripley became head football coach at Matanzas High School, the team had an average record of three wins and seven losses per year. In the past three seasons, however, Ripley has transformed the program, culminating in last year’s 7-3 season and the first playoff appearance.
But as the team won on the field, some players felt harassed — so much so that one player’s parents requested the district open a formal bullying investigation. The district conducted the investigation and sent Ripley a letter of censure, finding that, while Ripley’s actions didn’t match the definition of bullying, his coaching philosophy and style were “questionable and unacceptable.”
Players said Ripley would yell, swear and sometimes call students nasty names. One player’s parents removed him from the school entirely because of Ripley’s treatment of their son, they said.
Parents of two players said their sons were so affected by Ripley’s treatment that the parents enrolled their sons in mental health counseling.
Another student started a handwritten petition against Ripley that was signed by 10 team members.
“He is untrustworthy and unfit to be our coach,” the petition stated. “Coach Ripley has: Called players stupid, made racial remarks regarding pigment of skin, does not motivate players, tells players they suck, has admitted to trying to get players to quit.”
The list continues, mentioning an instance in which students said Ripley, in anger, threw a weight in the school’s weight room; stating that he’d spoken about personal relationship issues on the field; and saying that he had, “multiple times,” gotten mad and walked off the field in anger.
The student whose treatment prompted the school district’s bullying investigation is JaKobi Givens, a 16-year-old junior.
“Over the course of the last several months, Coach Ripley has bullied, intimidated, belittled, slandered, openly singled out, and isolated our son,” JaKobi’s father, Johnnie Givens, wrote in a letter to the district requesting an investigation.
Ripley declined to comment for this story, telling the Palm Coast Observer, “I don’t believe it’s in my best interest to speak with you, the media, or about this young man (JaKobi Givens).”
School district staff also declined to comment.
Problems between Ripley and JaKobi started, Johnnie Givens said, when JaKobi told Ripley that he wanted to play running back instead of fullback; things escalated when the teen, prompted in a group exercise to write down his goals, mentioned that he wanted to play at Florida State University.
The Givens family said Ripley treated JaKobi’s request to play a different position as insubordination, and he mocked the teen’s desire to play running back or play at FSU.
“One day during practice,” Johnnie Givens wrote in his letter to the district, “Coach Ripley yelled at JaKobi on the practice field, ‘As soon as you get it through your head that you’re not this superstar running back that you think you are, the better off we’ll all be!’ He also stated, ‘They are just better than you, face it.’”
A former team member confirmed JaKobi’s statement that Ripley had called JaKobi a “turd” during practice, and, as the Givens family had said, that Ripley limited JaKobi’s playing time.
"To be honest, all coaches swear. I never really thought of it as directed towards the kids. ... Him just chewing into us wasn't anything that we couldn't handle."
Hunter Turner, former Matanzas football player
JaKobi said that his stress over football practice made it hard for him to concentrate on his class work.
“I’ve had coaches before that have been tough on me, but I know that it’s because they wanted me to succeed,” he said. “This is different. It would just be negative, negative, negative.”
District staff met with another team player and took down notes on what the teen said. “(Ripley) yells at JaKobi more than other kids,” the teen said. “He yells at everyone, but he definitely yells at JaKobi more than any other player.” Other coaches yelled, too, the teen continued, saying, “Sometimes they yell to get your attention. But other times it’s in a mean way.”
On one occasion, after team members had been involved in a fight, Ripley grouped the team together and laid into them. One of the kids audio recorded the profanity-laced rant, and the Givens took notes on it and sent the recording and the notes to the school district, noting the times at which Ripley had used the F-word and called other students idiots, and referred to students who didn’t play ball as “wannabes.”
“You’re a b----, and you’re a pussy, and you don’t give a f--- ’cause you don’t want to come and do the s--- that they’re doing,” Ripley said on the recording.
Johnnie Givens and his wife, Robin, met with Ripley early on to try to smooth things over, and found him “condescending” and dismissive, according to the letter.
After they brought their concerns to Matanzas Principal Earl Johnson, Johnnie Givens said, things escalated, and Ripley was even more hostile toward JaKobi. They felt like it was retaliation.
“That’s when everything went haywire,” Johnnie Givens said. “He became aggressive to him, unrelenting.”
Johnnie Givens felt like the district didn’t respond adequately to the family’s concerns. He tried to tell them that, he said.
“This man is bullying these kids, and you’re allowing him to continue to coach because he’s winning,” Givens said he’d told Johnson.
Both the Givens family and parents of another student said Ripley showed a side of himself to the kids that he didn’t show to parents, teachers or administrators.
“That recording, that’s the side the kids see,” Robin Givens said. “And the district has that recording; they know he acts that way. And they do nothing.”
Not all of Ripley’s players had complaints.
“He was a pretty chill coach,” said Hunter Turner, 19 and a former Matanzas player. “He was playful with us most of the time.”
Turner had heard Ripley swear and yell but didn’t find that unusual.
“To be honest, all coaches swear,” he said. “I never really thought of it as directed towards the kids. ... Him just chewing into us wasn’t anything that we couldn’t handle.”
Turner said that he didn’t notice that any students felt personally targeted by Ripley. But, he said, “I guess a kid that couldn’t take it might get upset.”
Caesar Campana, a former football coach at Flagler Palm Coast High School who started coaching in 1976, agreed that profanity is not unusual among football coaches. He recalled playing for iconic college football coach Lou Holtz.
“Lou’s profanity was incredible, but that was in the 1970s,” Campana said. “Lou Holtz was one of my heroes, but you can’t teach a kid that way in the year 2017, the 21st century. The acceptable behavior is much different now, and it’s for the better. Looking back at the kind of things I learned from him, I accepted it. But there are some people who he might have had a negative impact on.”
"In the 21st century, you’ve got to teach these kids like you treat your own kid. And that’s the bottom line. ... You’ve got to think in terms of, this is a kid who’s got to go home to their parents and do things outside of your world."
Caesar Campana, former FPC football coach
These days, Campana continued, “the old coach, the swearing and the yelling and the screaming, and the one that gets real emotional — that’s something that you don’t really see much with the successful coaches. I think people figured out that you’re not going get much out of a kid by yelling and screaming and cursing at them.”
Coaches tend to model themselves on their own former coaches, he said. “Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s bad.”
“Its kind of funny, because football’s a physical sport, and sometimes when you’re teaching drill or something, you’ve got to put your hands on a kid,” he said. “You couldn’t cross that line when you’re in a classroom, so sometimes it’s confusing. The thing that forces coaches to cross the line — in any sport — you’ll see the coaches get so involved in what they’re doing, they’ll say things, they will go over that line. But they shouldn’t.”
Campana said his own understanding of coaching changed over the years.
He traced the shift to his observation of football practice sessions with the Miami Dolphins and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“I noticed that coaches are very matter-of-fact, very professional — you know, like they’re teachers,” he said.
His own shift toward a gentler coaching philosophy solidified in the 1990s, when he began coaching his own sons.
“You become a different coach when you have your own sons out there, and you realize that everybody else is someone else’s son,” Campana said. “That was a big factor in the coaches I hired. I really kind of leaned toward coaches that had children, and they really kind of understood that it was more than just this object that you’re trying to motivate by yelling and screaming.”
Campana said he has seen football coaches who yell and scream at kids; he called that kind of behavior “abusive.” Some kids have hard home lives and might deal with yelling and screaming from their parents already. Those kids, especially, don’t need even more of it from their coaches, he said.
“There are so many kids that you affect, and on a football field, for a long time, we had this idea that you could say whatever you want to motivate a kid,” he said. “But you can’t. In the 21st century, you’ve got to teach these kids like you treat your own kid. And that’s the bottom line. ... You’ve got to think in terms of, this is a kid who’s got to go home to their parents and do things outside of your world.”
When the district investigated Ripley’s treatment of JaKobi Givens, the Givens family felt like not much happened. They did get a letter of findings.
But the bullying investigation — led by the district’s ESE director Tim King, who handles disciplinary matters — hinged on three criteria: For behavior to be considered bullying, it had to be repeated over time, there had to be an imbalance of power, and the actions of the person doing the alleged bullying had to have demonstrated malicious intent.
“After a thorough investigation it was determined and mutually agreed by the investigation team mentioned above, Mr. Ripley did not intentionally nor maliciously target JaKobi Givens or any other specific player or players,” the letter states. However, the letter continues, “Mr. Ripley demonstrated an autocratic ... coaching philosophy and style with a variety of other players on the team. Unfortunately, Mr. Ripley did not recognize his coaching style and philosophy was having a negative effect on JaKobi Givens.”
The letter went on to stay that Ripley’s overall coaching style was “lacking rapport” with the players.
Although the district’s investigation team did not find malicious intent, it stated, “the team has determined a variety of football players received a repeated pattern of treatment repeated over time which is in question, noted, documented and will be formally addressed. ... Mr. Ripley’s coaching philosophy and coaching style is questionable and is unacceptable based on the philosophy of Flagler Schools and the administration of Matanzas High School.”
That Nov. 22, 2016, letter was signed by Vernon Orndorff, the district’s executive director of leadership; district Human Resources Director Jim Woods; and by King.
A “letter of counseling” sent from Orndorff to Ripley six days later informed him of the district’s findings and recommended that Ripley “seek professional development in interacting with players, building positive rapport with players and developing healthy relationships with players and families.”
Other communication between district officials also noted that Ripley’s conduct constituted “social exclusion and public humiliation.” The letter stated: “This type of behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. You are formally being warned, to bring your attention to the severity of this situation. Failure to correct this behavior and/or further violation of Flagler County School District policy will result in additional disciplinary action up to and including discharge.”
Spring football begins in April.
