JV Football Coach Investigated For Having Players Lay On Graves

The Marcellus school district is investigating a complaint that its junior varsity football coach made players lay down on top of graves in a local cemetery to emphasize a message about not giving up.

District superintendent Craig Tice confirmed that an inquiry is ongoing into the decision by head coach Jim Marsh to stop the team bus at a cemetery near the school Saturday afternoon after a loss at Skaneateles. Tice is out of town until Wednesday, though, and did not yet have specifics regarding the incident.

“The bus did stop at the cemetery,’ Tice said. “We’re talking to the kids, the coaches and the parents. We’re still trying to collect information, definitely.’

Monday night, several parents of junior varsity players met with district officials for 50 minutes in the high school library. Assistant superintendent Patricia McCarron, who attended the meeting, said the parents asked to be heard. When a reporter pressed for further details and to make the parents available for comment, she told the reporter to get off the school campus.

Marsh, who coaches the Mustangs’ boys varsity basketball team, did not return a phone call seeking comment Monday.

According to two sources familiar with the situation who requested that their names be withheld, both players and parents were upset about the matter.

The sources said Marsh, also an English teacher at the high school, ordered the team bus to pull over near the cemetery. He then asked the roughly two dozen players to get out and lay on the graves.

The players rested there for several minutes while Marsh preached about the importance of playing hard, and how those buried underneath them would cherish the opportunity to trade places with the players and fight to win.

Marsh then urged the Mustangs to arise from the dead and bring their season back to life. At school Monday, some of the players were called into the principal’s office to give their version of the issue and then were told to go home and inform their parents.

Monday night, several of the parents in the meeting with McCarron left clearly agitated, but when approached in the parking lot none of them commented for attribution. One railed against the notion of airing “dirty laundry.’

Another, when asked for an explanation of what was discussed, was terse as he briskly walked to his car.

“If you were part of the district, you would know what’s going on,’ he said.