Fired Principal And Accusers Seek To Be Millionaires
by Ruthy Wexler
Now Homeless: The notoriety that surrounded Ozell Williams as soon as the cheerleader video went viral, caused his income to shrink, his business, Mile High Tumblers, to diminish and job offers to disappear. Unable to continue paying rent, Williams now stores his belongings in a storage unit and sleeps in his car.
The East High Cheerleading scandal which erupted at the beginning of the 2017-18 school year, continues to roil the East High community, as the school year draws to a close. It was triggered August 2017 when a video of a young cheerleader screaming in pain went viral. Denver Public Schools (DPS) Superintendent Tom Boasberg immediately fired the coach Ozell Williams, who, the cheerleader claimed, forced her into a split. Boasberg removed East’s Athletic Director Lisa Porter and Principal Andy Mendelsberg when DPS’s own investigation deemed them responsible. East High families and staff remained divided about what really happened. Now, an impending lawsuit puts East cheerleaders back in the spotlight — and the Chronicle wonders: What happened to those at the center of the controversy?
Where Are They Now?
Andy Mendelsberg, forced out of his “dream job,” is negotiating, according to sources, a settlement in the million dollar range from DPS, in addition to his retirement package.
Lisa Porter could not be reached for comment.
Ally Wakefield, the cheerleader in the video, claims she suffered physical and emotional injuries under Williams’ coaching, as now do four other girls. Five families are represented by highly respected attorney Qusair Mohammedbhai, who, in a Draft Complaint, named Williams, Mendelsberg, Porter, two individuals from another school and DPS itself as defendants. Any settlements with DPS are expected to be in the multi-million-dollar range for each of the former cheerleader plaintiffs.
Tom Boasberg received a performance-based bonus of $18,000.
Ozell Williams i
Powerhouse: Qusair Mohammedbhai is the powerful and highly successful attorney for the punitive cheerleader plaintiffs in their actions against DPS and Ozell Williams. He has produced some of the highest judgements in the state for his clients.
s now living out of his car.
How’d That Happen?
Back in June 2017, Ozell Williams was a 29-year-old black man with an apartment, a savings account, a growing business (Mile High Tumblers) and a measure of local fame. Googling him produced a confident gymnast soaring through the air at a Nuggets game.
With the cheerleading video’s posting on August 22, 2017, Williams entered a new world. Used to accolades from tumbling students and parents, he now received torrents of angry emails, many racial. Googling him called
Supportive Parent: Ozell Williams with East cheerleader Rajha, her mother Shaunna and East student Mekaela at a Nuggets game in March 2018. Like the majority of East cheer parents, Shaunna does not believe that Williams harmed or intentionally hurt her daughter in any way.
up only the crying cheerleader. Gyms who’d welcomed Mile High Tumblers now refused. Publications uniformly condemned him, even those formerly full of praise.
In their Spring 2016 “Best Of” issue, Denver’s Westword applauded Mile High Tumblers’ community outreach. “Williams is changing Colorado for the better, one flip at a time.”
Three days after the video posted, on August 25, 2017, Westword denounced Williams’ actions as “torture.”
The notoriety now attached to Williams scared off clients. “He lost a lot of sponsors,” says accountant Natasha Jackson. “His business went down to a few loyal supporters.”
Savings depleted, Williams looked for tumbling, then other, work. But once employers, like a recent Comcast supervisor, googled him, jobs were no longer available.
“The media slandered me without doing research, Williams says. “The person they describe, that’s not who I am.”
Who Is Ozell Williams?
Supporters: On November 21, 2017, Inside Edition flew in from New York, to film Williams at Gymnastics Unlimited in Northglenn and tell “his side of the story.” About 45 supporters, including East cheerleaders, their parents, former tumbling students and assistant coaches, showed up. But the TV spot, sandwiched between Thanksgiving stories, lasted only five minutes and did not reach many people.
Raised in extreme poverty, Williams determined early on to perfect whatever talents he possessed. “Tumbling brought me out of where I came from.” He won prizes, performed with Team USA and one cold day in 2014, broke the Guinness World Record for back handsprings (47) by pushing himself to 57.
Williams reveled in the life he’d built from scratch, pride occasionally manifesting as an over-the-top claim; e.g., saying he’d been an Olympic athlete because he “considered Team USA on an Olympic level.” But his accomplishments were sufficiently solid for DPS to hire him on May 11, 2017, to lead iconic East High School’s cheer team into competition.
Hard Coach
“I’d heard East cheerleaders, under Terita Berry, had a huge reputation,” says cheer mom Shaunna Stribling, part of the Interviewing Committee that chose Williams, “but that went away with the next coach, under whom there were lots of injuries — and we realized why: those girls weren’t conditioned.
“We decided, among the things we cared about most in a new coach, conditioning was first … and Ozell did it, he conditioned the hell out of those girls. Had them running miles, they had arm muscles, six-packs … They were strong!
“Ozell’s what’s known as a hard coach.”
“Cheerleading is now a competitive sport,” says cheer mom Nikki Higgs. “Twenty-plus girls [on that team] wanted that push to become athletes. Only a few did not.”
“What I see when I look at my daughter’s video [of the stretch], is just hard work,” says one cheer mom. “That’s what athletics is.”
“The split stretch was not sudden,” explains Williams. “It was a culmination of all we’d worked on. I’d been conditioning [the team] for five weeks, including stretches preparatory to a split.
“Ally could have come out of [the split] at any time. Just like she did the first time, by dropping her hip.”
Mile High Tumblers: Williams at work doing what he loves best, coaching and teaching tumbling.
“Right before she did it,” recalls cheerleader Nyla Higgs, “Ally called to [a friend], ‘Take my phone and record me.’”
Several parents voiced their belief that the video was a setup.
Aftermath
On October 11, 2017, DA Beth McCann cited “two key reasons” she didn’t file charges against Williams: “Opinions differ [regarding the split stretch] and, there were differing accounts of what actually happened that day.”
Cheerleaders and parents who support Williams — a majority — say he prepared girls for the stretch and told them it was optional.
The families who are suing claim Williams forced girls into splits; when “they begged to stop, pushed them down even harder.” Included in their list of emotional injuries, many ways Williams “sexually harassed” the girls, including “dressing them in incredibly skimpy uniforms” — a claim other parents call “ridiculous.”
The team had forged friendships. Now the five whose families are suing say they’re bullied at school; teammates claim the opposite is true.
Williams continues to post videos and photos he says prove his innocence, to attorneys’ consternation.
“I need to clear my name,” says Williams. “What do I have to lose? They’ve already taken away my life.”
How Hard Is That?
Many parents question DPS’s handling of the controversy. “It feels like a cover-up,” observed one couple with two kids at East.
Another parent, an attorney, remains “… horrified at the money DPS has spent … Fees to an ‘outside law firm’ who were really their real estate lawyers. A PR firm. Paying Andy off … lowballing, I’ll still bet millions.”
“DPS is so busy burnishing its reputation and protecting powerful people, they simply weren’t paying attention,” says a disgusted cheer mom. “So they hang Ozell out to dry. Why didn’t they survey the situation — a talented coach, a young black man about to work with young girls — and realize someone experienced should also be there? How hard is that?”
A former East parent observes, “Everyone knows, it was either Boasberg’s or Mendelsberg’s head that had to roll. Boasberg has political aspirations, so …”
Mendelsberg, declining to talk for this article, wrote, “I truly appreciate your prior article in regard to the cheerleading incident [Chronicle, November 2017]. “It was nice to see the truth. I hope the truth in this latest situation comes out.”