A high school football coach in Simi Valley has been dismissed after a school surveillance video showed him kicking a football that struck a student-athlete in the groin during a recent practice.
Coach fired after video emerges
The Simi Valley Unified School District reviewed the footage and subsequently fired Adam Brubaker as head football coach at Royal High School, according to Eyewitness News. His dismissal came only hours before Royal was scheduled to open its season on Friday.
Video captured by a camera on the school campus appears to show Brubaker visibly frustrated as he approached a player. He then kicked a nearby football, which struck another student in the groin and sent the player to the ground in pain.
Brubaker calls kick an accident
“I kicked the ball and it hit him in the groin area and instantly I felt like I was going to pass out,” Brubaker told Eyewitness News. “I feel obviously a great deal of remorse for what happened. It’s a one in a million shot.”
Brubaker maintained that the incident was accidental and insisted that he never intended to hit the player.
He explained that he had become angry after watching one player aggressively bring a running back to the ground during a drill, which he said was against the team’s practice rules because of the potential injury risk.
The footage also appears to show several other adults rushing toward the player and confronting Brubaker while the student received attention.
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Brubaker reiterated that he was not trying to kick the player and said he later approached him after practice to apologize.
“When we finished practice, I went back over to him. I apologized,” Brubaker said.
Brubaker accepts district’s decision
Despite believing the kick was accidental, Brubaker said he understood why the district decided to remove him from his coaching position.
“Nothing has been harder in my life than the last three days. It has been an absolute trying time for me, my wife, my kids,” said Brubaker.
Following his dismissal, Brubaker’s image was also removed from Royal High School’s football staff page. The position that had previously listed him as the varsity head coach now displays an empty image slot marked “Vacant.”
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Assistant coach Cody MacArthur is expected to take charge when the Highlanders host North Hills-Monroe on Aug. 21. Principal Reina Zapata said an interim head coach “will be named shortly.”
