High School Coach Grabs Player By The Hair And Throws Her To The Floor During Brawl [Video]

A Colorado girls high school basketball coach allegedly threw one of his own players to the floor by her ponytail during a brawl that broke out between arch rival teams during a game.

Sophomore Areeon Frilot was suspended from Arvada High School for five days and kicked off the varsity team altogether. “It hurts me to know that I can’t play anymore,” she admitted.

The coach received no discipline, however.

Frilot told the ABC News Denver affiliate that she was trying to be a peacemaker in the scuffle with the Alameda High School team, and that she thought that one of the Alameda players had grabbed her from behind. “I was just shocked, like I can’t believe that the one person I trusted out of everybody in school was the one to do that to me,” she explained.

The student did acknowledge that before the game, the coach warned the Arvada team against fighting or leaving the bench if a fight broke out, and that he would “step in” if necessary.

Evidently this wasn’t their first rodeo, either. “The girls’ teams fought in a game last year — and Areeon was involved it. She also admits that she got into another fight at school.”

Frilot and her mom, Melissa Martinez, are dissatisfied with the way Jefferson County Public Schools officials handled the whole encounter (see embed below). Neither the coach nor the administration apparently offered any apologies, Martinez contended.

Lakewood, Colo., police investigated the incident after Martinez lodged a complaint, but the local Jefferson County prosecutor has apparently declined to file any charges.

When Martinez confronted Coach Roger Griffin — who also heads the school’s math department — immediately after the game, his response just didn’t add up, she claimed. “There was no, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, it was an accident.’ He was just as angry as I was. Like I had assaulted his child.”

Areeon added that “I just got no respect at all from the administration. None of them even asked if I was okay the next day, like they were all just pointing fingers, making themselves look like the better person.”

Commenting on the incident, Fandsided observed that “Obviously putting hands on a player is unacceptable on the part of Griffin though it’s difficult to tell his intentions. Was he simply attempting to stop Frilot from making an already bad situation worse and accidentally grabbed her in that way in a panic? Or was he attempting to send a message and purposely performed such? Whatever the case, the video is not good and proves that fighting of any sort should not be accepted at the high school level.”

The school district had no comment on the hair-grabbing incident other than to say that officials considered the matter closed in the absence of charges.

Do you think that officials responded to the basketbrawl appropriately?

[Image via YouTube]