'Fight Club' video key evidence in football hazing suit against Oklahoma school district
KINGFISHER, Oklahoma — The fight inside "The Ring" in the high school locker room lasted less than a minute.
One boy had his hands wrapped in towels. The other wore gloves. Their teammates circled around them and cheered as both freshmen began throwing wild punches.
"Kick his (explicative) ass," one teammate yelled.
The taller boy connected to the other's face over and over and over. "Hit the body. Go to the body," someone shouted.
Instead, the taller boy swung again for the face. His opponent went sprawling to the floor underneath a wall where "JACKET PRIDE" was written large.
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The scene captured in a 2018 video seems like something right out of the movie "Fight Club," but it was part of a ritualized pattern of hazing suffered by Kingfisher (Oklahoma) High School football players under its Hall of Fame head coach, former team members say.
The video is among key new evidence to emerge in a federal lawsuit against Kingfisher Public Schools and head coach Jeff Myers.
It also has become evidence in a probe by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. That probe began last year and is nearly complete.
Did Kingfisher football coaches allow hazing, fail to report bullying?
At issue in both is whether football coaches allowed or even encouraged the hazing of younger students to toughen them up.
Also at issue is whether coaches failed to report to police incidents of locker room bullying that included allegations of sexual assaults. Myers allegedly told players "what happens in the locker room stays in the locker room."
A former player filed the lawsuit. He alleges he was often targeted for bullying, forced into the locker room fights and once held down by teammates while another pressed his naked buttocks onto his face because he was the "rich kid."
Former players say the locker room fighting happened so regularly it had its own name and coaches sometimes bet on the outcomes.
"It's called 'The Ring' because you would all create a ring," the plaintiff told an OSBI agent last year.
The school district and head coach have denied wrongdoing. Their attorneys did not respond to requests for comment about the video and other new evidence.
Kingfisher County District Attorney Mike Fields will decide whether the OSBI probe results in criminal charges. Fields is familiar with the culture of football, having been a linebacker at the University of Oklahoma in the early 1990s.
The DA declined comment last week.
Jeff Myers continues to coach at Kingfisher High School
The civil case caused a public outcry last year.
Upsetting to many was a photo in the lawsuit of injuries to the plaintiff's back. The lawsuit alleges the marks came from being whipped after showering with wet, knotted towels.
Also upsetting was an allegation that Myers warned players to keep quiet after the sexual assault so the team didn't get in trouble.
The school board last year rejected a $1.5 million settlement demand.
"The School was more concerned about protecting Coach Myers than it was with protecting these children," the plaintiff's attorneys told a judge in a legal filing April 17.
"One need look no further for proof of that than the fact that — despite all of this evidence of abuse and inaction — Coach Myers is still the head football coach in Kingfisher.
"That is Kingfisher High School football," the attorneys wrote.
"It is infected with a culture that not only tolerates, but encourages bullying, hazing, and abuse. It is a culture that values winning above the health and safety of these boys. It has led children to attempt and commit suicide. It is the kind of environment that experts say leads to school shootings."
The plaintiff, who graduated in 2021, told the OSBI agent that upper classmen would pick two younger players to wrestle or box after practice.
"They'd make me go until I lost," he said.
He said the coaches would come in to the locker room when things got rowdy and loud, according to records on his interview.
The coaches then would call out players to fight.
"They wouldn't put actual money on it but they would make bets to the other coaches of who they think is going to win," he recalled.
Former players allege one time a coach got in "The Ring." The coach won by getting a player in a headlock.
Another time, a boy "got punched in the face so hard his eye swelled and turned black," one former player told a private investigator.
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"He had to go home and tell his parents that a football hit him because he was afraid they would go up to the school and complain ... (and) he would be hazed even worse."
Myers, 56, has coached the Kingfisher Yellowjackets for 19 seasons. His overall record there is 184-62. The team last fall went 8-4. The team that won the Class 3A football championship in 2013 was undefeated.
He already is in the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
A copy of the video, blurred to protect the players' identities, has been filed in the case in Oklahoma City federal court. The Oklahoman, part of the Paste BN Network, viewed an unedited copy, spoke to one of the fighters and looked through yearbooks in an effort to verify it actually was recorded in the Kingfisher High School locker room.
The fighter, who is now in college, said the video was recorded for him on his cellphone. He confirmed turning it over to the plaintiff's attorneys. He asked not to be identified.
He also confirmed coaches knew about the fighting. "They like would hear like the commotion and sometimes come in there and see what was happening," he said.
At one point in the 2018 fall semester "they kind of just told us to cut it out," he said.
New attorneys allege abuse in Kingfisher football program dating to 2005
Representing the plaintiff is Cameron Spradling, an Oklahoma City attorney who has successfully sued school districts in the state before. Also now involved is the same law firm, Nix Patterson, that helped the state secure millions of dollars in settlements from opioid companies.
Those attorneys told the judge April 17 they have compiled evidence of abuse dating back to 2005, right around the time Myers took over the football program.
Besides the video, also new to the case are:
- Statements from a former player and his mother that he tried to hang himself twice after getting bullied in the locker room in 2019. The former player confirmed to The Oklahoman a teammate dropped his pants and sat on his face while he was held down. He said he thinks about it everyday. "I hate myself," he said.
- A 2005 police report showing a mother accused Myers of assaulting her son at the middle school during gym class.
- A former player's complaint to the school board that Myers "is not who you think he is." In a December email, the former student wrote that Myers "for sure verbally and psychologically tormented me." The former player also questioned if Myers is to blame for a Jan. 1, 2020, suicide. He wrote Myers once grabbed that former player by the facemask and screamed, "I don't give a (explicative) who is in the stands. I'll drag you around however I want. I don't care if it's your mommy, daddy, or grandma and grandpa."
- A statement from a former star wide receiver that Myers squeezed bacteria from his knee in 2010 while he was held down on the training table. "I was getting care from my doctor," the former player told The Oklahoman. "He took it upon himself to get me ready for a game. I was on crutches and could barely walk. It made it worse." He said his doctor was forced to make painful incisions to address the staph infection.
- A 2011 letter to the school board from an attorney hired by the wide receiver's family. The attorney asked that Myers be disciplined. The attorney disclosed that Myers was secretly recorded telling the player after the season that the player was ignorant, selfish and immature, and did not understand the concept of team.
The Paste BN Network is not using the plaintiff's name because of a policy against identifying victims of sex crimes in most instances.
He said last year he did not pursue a lawsuit against the school district until after graduating because he wanted to keep playing. Among his allegations is that coaches allowed younger players to be shot with a paintball gun in the locker room at close range.
His attorneys last week offered again to drop the case, this time for $5 million and Myers' firing. The school board met Monday night and voted to have its attorneys respond to the offer.