I thought only girls pull hair when they get mad...

I’ll tell you one thing: if a coach did this to my child you would have to hold BOTH me and my husband back or there would be BIG trouble. Or, you know, I mean, we’d try to behave responsibly by calling the authorities and prosecuting him for assault via the appropriate channels of the law.

Some parents in Roseville, California are in an uproar after high school swimming coach, Geoff Capell, tried to pull the captain of the school’s girls swimming team out of the pool by her hair during a swim meet last Friday. The woman who caught the action on tape – parent of another girl on the team – called police.

Capell was apparently frustrated that the Roseville High girls were coming in fifth out of six teams at the meet and is said to have been furious with the team captain, Jennifer McCarrol, and another swimmer for what he considered to be “intentional disqualification”.

That’s when shaky, unclear video (you can see it after the jump) shows Capell reaching down and grabbing McCarrol’s hair, partially lifting her out of the pool.

“We’re very sorry that this unfortunate incident occurred,” Roseville Joint Unified School District Director of Pupil Services Steve Williams said in a statement to the press. “A physical response like this by any coach for any reason cannot and will not be supported.”

Capell resigned from his volunteer position as assistant swimming coach after several parents expressed outrage over the incident. FOX 40 in Sacramento reports the parents of Jennifer McCarroll filed a police report citing Capell’s hair-pulling as misdemeanor battery. The Roseville Police Department is expected to send that report on to the county’s district attorney office.

One look at the nearly two thousand comments after the story on Yahoo shows just how divided people are about the incident.  While McCarroll’s parents and others are justifiably angry other swim parents are allegedly defending the coach’s actions due to the disqualification that sparked them. That disqualification is expected to land both McCarroll and the other swimmer some type of a disciplinary response from the team’s head swimming coach, who happens to be Geoff Capell’s daughter, Kelly Capell.

What do you think? Justifiable coach behavior or completely inappropriate? What would you do if he did that to your teen?

Image: flickr.com/Paul-W

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