Disturbing videos of high school cheerleaders in Denver being forced into splits made national headlines and provoked outrage across America.
The coach, Ozell Williams, who is now on leave, completed a training session with the Colorado High School Activities Association, or CHSAA and is certified. That training touched on rules, regulations and safety.
CHSAA works with more than 350 schools across Colorado, including East High. The schools volunteer to be a part of CHSAA and then coaches are required to go through training. Williams went through that training the last weekend of July.
The commissioner Rhonda Blanford-Green explains what that entails.
"We aren't training coaches to compete or to integrate stunts into their day to day operations or sidelines. We are about making sure making sure coaches are competent in safety and risk minimization in terms of if there was an emergency at the practice how are we going to respond. Making sure they have all the rules and regulations in place."
When asked who oversees a coach's decision for what kind of stunts a cheerleading team does Blanford-Green responded:
"It's your school board. It's your school administration that has the ability to be the oversight for every single coach, assistant coach and voluntary coach that's in your building that is going to be working with your kids."
Blanford-Green said when she watched the video she saw several red flag.
"Our mantra athletics should be fun. When I saw that video that didn't look fun to me. Something was wrong," said Blanford-Green.
Denver Public Schools did not comment on a school and administrations responsibility because of the on-going investigation.
Superintendent Tom Boasberg did release a statement late Thursday night: http://on9news.tv/2w2RxTX.
You can watch the full interview with the CHSAA commissioner about where the organization's oversights starts and ends:
