On Friday their leader lost it.
“If I don’t see you guys Monday, you guys wrestle hard,” he told his team before the waterworks began, according to an athlete present.
For two decades Coach Brock Hutchinson has been molding young boys into victorious gladiators on the football field and the wrestling mat for the Smith Center High School Redmen.
But last week he broke down after learning his future as a coach and educator was against the ropes. The day before, a mother had filed a scathing Title IX lawsuit in Kansas City’s federal court against the Smith Center School District, claiming Hutchinson had relentlessly sexually harassed her daughter, “Jane Doe.”
The mother who brought the lawsuit sent a statement to The Daily Beast through her attorney stating: “We hope our lawsuit sheds light on what has been happening in that school.”
Attempts to reach Hutchinson for comment were unsuccessful. In a brief interview with The Kansas City Star, Hutchinson said he was just learning about the lawsuit and declined to comment.
Meanwhile, Hutchinson’s family insists the lawsuit is a “witch hunt,” as his mother, Pam Hutchinson, told The Daily Beast. “You have to know the background of this family to realize he’s 100 percent incapable of something like this.
“He loves kids and that’s why he teaches.”
She added that Brock Hutchinson is also a devoted family man who married his high-school sweetheart.
“His kids mean so much to him and of course he’s worried about his family and his good name,” she said. “He has a good Christian family. They’re churchgoers.”
But the lawsuit paints a different picture.
Hutchinson “routinely and openly” referred to female students “in sexualized terms,” according to the complaint, which accuses the coach of speaking to students “about his own sexual acts” and gloating that he had coaxed “female students into removing their shirts and engaging in activities in their sports bras.”
It also alleges that the coach sexually humiliated and bullied Jane Doe in front of her classmates and school staffers to the point that the volleyball player withered in spirits, withdrew in October of this year, and is going to graduate from another school in a different town.
When the young girl started dating a football player on Hutchinson’s team, the coach allegedly quizzed the youths about their sexual exploits. “[He] began inquiring of Jane Doe’s boyfriend in the presence of other District students what kind of sexual acts Jane Doe had performed,” the lawsuit states.
The bullying escalated, according to the civil complaint, and culminated in an incident in December 2014, when Coach Hutchinson was teaching gym and allegedly “rolled a ball between Jane Doe’s legs.” He then smirked and announced to the “entire class, ‘Don’t worry about [Jane Doe], she’s used to having balls between her legs.’”
The Smith Center High School declined to provide a comment to The Daily Beast about the allegations against Coach Hutchinson. Phone and email messages to the district office were not immediately returned.
The mere act of second-guessing a coach, let alone calling him out for harassment of this nature in a hamlet of almost 1,700 people—whose largest employer is the school district and where football rivals religion—might be considered sacrilege.
Not to mention Hutchinson is a local legend in his own right. The 42-year-old former Smith Center Coach of the Year (and also an at-risk coordinator) was an athletic great during his own high-school years competing for the storied football powerhouse.
According to the complaint, Hutchinson is a kind of small-town football god—the son of local star Dennis Hutchinson, who passed the whistle on to Brock after three decades of helping to lead the Redmen on the battlefield.
“Football coaches are revered, not just in school, but throughout the city and region, and the weekly high school game is the fiber of the region’s social fabric,” the complaint states.
It’s true the Redmen have brought glory to Smith Center’s rural haunts. They were the subject of the book Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen, which chronicles the unstoppable football team that held on to the nation’s longest winning streak of 79 games (when Brock Hutchinson was an assistant staffer) from 2004 to 2009.
While Hutchinson was leading his troops to victory, it was common knowledge that he had no filter.
Indeed, sources say Hutchinson was known for his off-color remarks, although friends insist he’s not a vicious person.
“It’s no secret that Brock may not be the most PC guy,” said one person close to the team.
Hutchinson’s supervisors allegedly took this same view when Jane Doe’s mother came to them with her daughter’s harassment claims.
“That’s just Brock being Brock,” they told her, according to the lawsuit.
But after Jane Doe’s mother informed the school district about the coach’s alleged behavior, the girl became the victim of an intense hazing campaign, the lawsuit claims.
In January of this year, Doe’s car tires were allegedly “slashed in the school parking lot.”
Two months later a male student apparently felt it was open season on Doe during Coach Hutchinson’s class.
The student, according to the lawsuit, made a crude joke and was gingerly reprimanded by Coach Hutchinson, who told the student, “Don’t joke with [Jane Doe] like that... You’re going to have her mom riding my ass again.”
Ostracization became the new norm for Doe, the complaint alleges. During a track meet, Doe, was singled out to stay home while attempting to travel with her teammates. The coach told her it was “because she would only compete in one event.” Yet the lawsuit alleges that other students with only one event were cleared to travel without a hitch.
Doe’s mother claims the unfavorable treatment displayed by the track and field coach suggests he was “excluding her daughter from participation because of his loyalty to Coach Hutchinson.”
Meanwhile, Hutchinson allegedly started calling the young girl “dumb” and tried to dissuade her from attending athletic events. According to the complaint, the coach started “glaring” at Doe during a wrestling meet and “once, sat on her feet in an effort to get her to leave.”
In June, the school opened an inquiry into Jane Doe’s complaint, led by Principal Greg Koelsch. Hutchinson allegedly “broke down in tears” in front of his students and “told them he was going to be fired because of the accusation,” the lawsuit states.
The district apparently sided with Hutchinson and didn’t find any merit in Doe and her mother’s accusations.
Vindicated, Coach Hutchinson allegedly let Doe know he hadn’t forgotten about her complaint. According to the lawsuit, the coach spotted Doe at the local Dollar General store and “stared down” Doe “while she moved from aisle to aisle.”
After that, Doe became the town’s pariah, her mother claims.
“District board members were not allowing their daughters to play on the same teams as Jane Doe in summer leagues,” the lawsuit alleges, adding that Doe was bullied by various Smith Center students and alumni.
In September of this year, administrators allegedly sat Doe down for a “two-hour session” demanding she “apologize to Coach Hutchinson’s daughter for the misery her family had caused [his] family the prior summer; that her mother should stop contacting Hutchinson [and] that Hutchinson ‘deserved a second chance.’”
When volleyball season came around, Doe, according to the lawsuit, was benched and her hopes to get a college scholarship dashed.
“The volleyball coaches and the track coach acted in concert with Coach Hutchinson to deprive Jane Doe access to school activities,” the lawsuit alleges.
Ultimately, the Title IX lawsuit, which is meant to protect against gender discrimination hindering a student’s education, calls out the school district and its leaders for valuing “its football coach and program over the rights of Jane Doe as a student.”
The school district, it claims, manufactured “a hostile educational environment and depriving Jane Doe of educational opportunities deliberately decided to take no action, and… acted to retaliate and intimidate [her].”
But Hutchinson’s family and supporters are sticking by the coach’s side and say Jane Doe and her mother are just trying to drag his name through the mud.
“Anybody that’s come in contact with him, they know what a kind and loving person he is,” Hutchinson’s mother, Pam, said through tears. “This is something that will warp him forever because… he will be afraid to get close to kids and help kids as he has in the past.”
Hutchinson’s father, local football legend Dennis Hutchinson, pleaded with the public not to rush to conclusions.
“This was supposed to be settled,” Dennis Hutchinson told The Daily Beast, referring to the school district’s probe into Jane Doe’s allegations over the summer. “They found nothing to go ahead with and people were interviewed.
“The school was told to go through a series of steps which they did. They met all the criteria.”
And a former head coach who led the Redmen to their undefeated streak, Kansas Hall of Famer Roger Barta, believes Brock Hutchinson’s name remains sterling.
“Personally, I think Brock has his reputation in place,” the 71-year-old former coach told The Daily Beast.
Barta coached Hutchinson and welcomed him onto his coaching staff, and described him as “one of them special kids that you have the fortune of being associated [with] in your career.”
He said when he returned to his hometown to coach, Hutchinson was “tremendous.”
“I think everybody knows him and respects him and appreciates what he does, and so I don’t think that’s going to be tarnished.”
A former varsity football starter who played under Hutchinson agreed with that assessment.
“He’s done so much for me and so much for my team,” the 20-year-old said. “He’s pretty much the center point of how we came together.
“He’s the glue of our football team.”