Cheerleaders Forced To Do The Splits

Denver, CO

A painful video shows Ozell Williams, a cheer coach, forcing cheerleaders to do the splits, but they’re crying and begging him to stop. In a video you hear Ally Wakefield screams "please stop" 9 times, but that is just one of 8 different videos where you can see these cheerleaders being forced to do the splits. She says she never expected this to happen when she walked into practice two months ago.

"I just didn’t expect to have to do elevated splits and have to do it."

Ally Wakefield was one of many cheerleaders held down by her coach back in June.

"He was pushing with his other knee on my back, trying to keep my posture straight."

Ally’s mom, Kirsten Wakefield says this is unacceptable.

"This is a grown man pushing my 13 year old daughter so hard, against her will, that she is screaming for help and he is ripping tissues in her body."

Kirsten sent out an email to the schools athletic director on June 15. I started with:

I have attached a video of the forced splits she and her other team members were forced to do at cheerleading camp and practices."

The email ends saying:

"My husband and I would like to know what the administration is going to do about my daughter’s injury and how it happened."

Kimberly Archie, the founder of the National Cheer Safety Foundation told us she is shocked this even happened.

"What was the principal thinking when they did nothing about this…to see that adults think that this is okay and for the school district to do nothing until journalists get involved is even more egregious than the act itself.

As a former coach she understands the sport can get very intense, but says coaches should never go this far.

"It’s okay to be competitive, it’s not okay for something like this, this is child abuse, this is child maltreatment, it’s not okay. When someone says no, it means no."
The coaches involved as well as the principal are on administrative leave. Denver police are officially looking into what happened.