A high school principal who was inducted into the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2022 now faces a year in jail after being charged with outraging public decency.
Authorities have been collecting accounts from players from the school’s football team that point to him cultivating a toxic environment for students.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation says Ringling High School principal and head football coach Phillip Koons created a “cult-like environment” that espoused toxic masculinity, homophobia, racism, and other forms of social and physical abuse.
His students and their parents’ complaints helped launch the investigation after Koons’ contract ended in February 2023. The Oklahoma State Department of Education placed the coach on a four-month administrative leave on Feb. 22, nine days after the local school board voted to renew Koons’ contract during a contentious public meeting, news station KFOR reports.
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As a result of Koons’ behavior, students and their parents secured legal representation, believing their civil rights had been infringed.
“These boys were subjected to a cult-like environment where this guy would groom them, break them down to where they were at a point that they wanted to quit playing football, some of them wanting to commit suicide, and then would build them back up within that cult system and create a deal where he was the most important thing in their lives,” Tod Mercer, a lawyer that represents one of the players, said in an interview with The Daily Beast.
“He would isolate them from their friends, from their family, even from their doctors,” the attorney said before adding that Black players on his team were especially disrespected.
Ringling, a town of approximately 1,600 people in southern Oklahoma, is less than 1 percent African-American, Census data shows.
According to Mercer, Koons called his players of African descent the N-word, “porch monkey,” and “stupid African.” One student said that he called a teammate a “jigaboo” and that those racist slurs even impacted him.
“This hurt considering you could clearly see the player getting upset,” the player said in a statement. “The player also came up to me and expressed how he felt targeted and singled out by his skin color.”
As the school’s top administrator, Koons worked alongside his family members as he created the alleged social climate of disturbing abuse. His wife is the school counselor, and his sons, Cooper and Sterling, are the assistant football coaches.
Another lawyer working with the OBI on behalf of some of the student-athletes who played under Koons is Cameron Spradling, who insists this was intentional.
“They created this culture of abuse and harassment, intimidation of their players for years,” Spradling said. “Assault and physical abuse and mental torture were just part of their unofficial curriculum in the athletic department. It is an environment that is like ‘Lord of the Flies.’”
The students shared their first-hand experiences with the lawyers, saying Koons also used fat-shaming as a tool to demean the minors, calling them “fat f–ks” and publicly blasting them by saying, “lay off the Twinkies.”
The official did not stop at targeting people because of their race and size but also mocked people with different mental disabilities or who lived with autism and gays, often using anti-same gender-loving terms to demean opposing teams.
“No group of society was immune from his attacks,” Mercer said. “He would attack and insult women. All races.”
As a result of these and many more offenses, one student said, has been struggling to cope.
“I have been dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts due to Phil Koons, Sterling Koons, and Cooper Koons,” the player continued. “I would dread going into practice every day because of how they treated me and the rest of the team.”
According to this student, Koons said he was “turning [the players] into men,” and his style was going to make them “leaders” in the future. The young person likened his experience on the team to “being brainwashed and conditioned” to be like them, adding that the coach also encouraged the students not to confide in their parents.
“I wouldn’t wish this kind of treatment on any kids,” the teen said.
Spradling asserts that the school’s failure to initiate a criminal investigation, despite evidence of prior misconduct in 2016, underscores their emphasis on winning football over student safety.
An example that should have shut him down before getting hired was In 2016. Oklahoma City Public Affairs notes that while at another school, he exposed himself to the team and told them they had to have a “d–k” in order to play football.
Ringling Public Schools has not publicly responded to Koons’ charges.
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