Lauren Hill: High School Soccer Coach In Tears After Sex With Student-Athlete Sends Her To Prison

Lauren Hill, a 27-year-old former high school girls’ soccer coach, broke down in tears in a Berrien County, Michigan courtroom Friday as she apologized for engaging in a three-year sexual relationship with one of her soccer players, who was just 15 when the illicit — and illegal — affair began.

Her attorney, however, asked a judge to go easy on Hill because she was “naive.”

“In hindsight, she knows she was wrong,” lawyer Peter Johnson told the court. “She’s very remorseful, you can see it in her emotions.”

Indeed, Hill told Judge Gary Bruce that her regret over the sexual relationship with the student would “echo off concrete walls.” But Bruce was not sympathetic, sentencing the former teacher and coach to between four and 15 years in prison, and ordering her to register as a sex offender for 25 years after her release, whenever that comes.

“Your victim was a child,” Bruce told Hill. “You manipulated her and exploited her vulnerability.”

At the same time, Bruce said that he believed that she was genuinely remorseful and not a danger to society. Still, her crime robbed the girl — who was present in the courtroom for Friday’s sentencing — of the “best four years” of her life and prevented her from finishing her senior year with her friends and classmates.

“The victim was looking for a mentor,” said Prosecutor Jacob Jenison. “Her family was going through a difficult time, and Miss Hill was there for her. And Miss Hill crossed the line and turned the relationship mentor/mentee, into that of a sexual nature.”

When Hill herself was in high school in Northville, Michigan, she was named the state’s Player of the Year in 2006 and played top-level college women’s soccer at Michigan State University.

But now, she told the court, her life is “devastated” because of her relationship with the student — a situation she said was the result of allowing her emotions to overrule her commons sense.

“To know I’m at fault for this is truly devastating. It cost me my dream of being a teacher. It cost me the respect of parents, athletes and other teachers. My family is hurting, but they’re still with me here today. I’ve lost pride in myself,” Hill said, reading from a prepared statement at her sentencing.

The Hill case is just the latest in what seems like a never-ending succession of female high school teachers engaging in illegal sexual relationships with students — both boys and girls.

As part of a deal with prosecutors, Lauren Hill pleaded guilty in May to two counts of using her position of authority to gain sexual contact with a girl younger than 16. She was also charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct, involving sexual penetration of a minor older than 16, but younger than 18 as part of a banned teacher-student sexual relationship. All of the charges involved the same high school girl.

[Image: Berrien County Sheriff’s Department]