A high school swim coach in Michigan has been fired from his position and arrested by police for allegedly sending sexual text messages to a student.
26-year-old Tyler Card turned himself in to police and faces two felony charges: accosing a child for immoral purposes and using the internet to commit a crime, according to The Detroit News.
Card was the head coach of the girls swim team at Allen Park High School in Allen Park, Michigan. WDIV Detroit reports that the Allen Park school board found sexual texts between him and a student and fired him from his position.
The sexual text messages were allegedly sent to a 15-year-old member of the girls swim team between February and March of last year (2015).
The Detroit News piece says students told the administration about the alleged messages, and that Card was immediately placed in administrative leave.
After an investigation, the school board fired Card. Card had been an assistant coach in the district previously, but was promoted to the head coaching position last year, The Detroit News reports.
Another account of the situation is here, on the local CBS affiliate’s site. This report says the messages were exchanged through the Snapchat app.
I have seen this story on several outlets and the portion of the story no outlet has reported is this coach also coached a USA and Y team as its head coach in that area for at least six years.
What baffles me is that these types of inappropriate situations are in the news almost daily, yet adults continue to send inappropriate texts/e-mails/pictures to underage kids. This simply defies all logic.
Anecdotal observations are that children of 11 -15 are sending racy pics of themselves out . Authorities have to sometimes put these on children’s sex offender registries because it is the law . This law was hoping to target the adult in the text chain but catches the kid also .
I was on a train about 3 years ago & some young boys (11-14) were terrorising the passengers including youngsters with sexualised poses & actions . I took a pic as evidence & then realised what I had on my phone . Some ‘children’ are not innocent & since then I give no automatic reservation of such.
As to texting -it is possible to roll up a… Read more »
The general public may be surprised at how often swimmers find themselves in abusive relationships with their coaches. Often, the only option is to quit swimming which is tragic. The abuse includes verbal, emotional, psychological, physical, and worse. Bullying too. Student athletes can learn skills to protect themselves, but the coaches likely hold all the power and will retaliate. For example, if a student swimmer speaks up and directly tells a coach to stop it, the swimmer will be benched at meets or other punishment, humiliation, or degradation in front of teammates so others can see what will happen to them if they too speak up. There are so many great coaches who support their swimmers but there are some… Read more »
You obviously are way to old to understand the mass forms of communication available these days. Just and FYI coaches can send unlimited texts to a recruit but the current coach shouldn’t text them?
One of the most moronic and ignorant comments ever posted here.
Its different when you are communicating with girls well underage. Even still, at the college age there are plenty of other ways to communicate with your team. Text alerts, tweets, and emails are all very common forms of communication used by athletic departments to steer clear of these types of issues. Smart head coaches wouldn’t risk this kind of stuff regardless of whether or not its allowed or not. That whole “unlimited” texts thing is also extremely false. You need to read up on the rules.
One of the high schools I coach for does not allow coaches to text their athletes. And any email sent to the student must also be copied to the parent. Not surprisingly, they have dealt with a similar situation as the one above.
While you suggest it not a good thing to text your coach. It’s also very hard to get kids these days to call or even pick up their phone when we call. Text messages is the norm now.
Really good point and it is spot on – texting is the only way to communicate with younger folks most of the time.
Texting is how kids communicate…I stopped practice one day because one of my swimmers said, matter of factly she had sent 8000 texts the month before!!!
I learned a lot that day.
Note to under-age swimmers: it’s not a good idea to text message your coach.
Note to coaches seeking to victimize under-age swimmers:
1. Don’t text message, Skype, Snapchat, etc. with your swimmers.
2. Seek companionship with people your own age.
3. Seriously? At age 26, you can’t find a date with somebody your own age, so you’re hitting up a 15 year old girl? Disgusting.
Alabama had an issue with this a few years back, granted the girls were college age, but still hard to believe that it happens even at the highest levels of the sport. Curl Burke had some serious issues too. Sad to know corruption knows no bounds.
Well, I don’t know the case, and it is probably a problem but I should not be so sure, you have to know more of this story…
But as a journalist for 42 years, most of them following swimming, I should tell parents to be serious with the fact that they cannot let their children with adults in a situation like being four or five hours every day for two hundred and fifty days of the year coach and swimmer together and not suppose that, sometimes, something happens? I don’t know if this young coach is “disgusting”, and possibly he is, possibly he is not, but I need to know more for deciding, and more than that I know… Read more »