ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 5, 1996 TAG: 9612050055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
A Pee Wee League football coach in Salem has been charged with assaulting 7-, 8-and 9-year-old players with a belt during a pre-championship game practice.
Keith E. Gaines, coach of the North Salem Eagles, was charged Wednesday with three counts of assault and battery.
Salem police have accused him of hitting three players with his belt the evening of Nov. 1 - the night before the team played in the Pee Wee Super Bowl.
Gaines, 42, denies hitting any of the children and said the charges against him "are ridiculous."
"One day I'm coach of the year for winning the Super Bowl. The next day I'm the coach from hell," he said.
Gaines said his young players were getting out of control and he took off his belt to demonstrate how - back when he was kid - "they used to pop us with their belts to make us listen."
Gaines said he quickly put his belt back on and never hit anyone.
In a telephone interview Wednesday night, he acknowledged it was probably "bad judgment" to take off the belt. But he said the incident has been "all blown out of proportion."
The charges are misdemeanors, and police issued Gaines a court summons rather than arresting him and taking him to jail. He is scheduled to appear in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court next Wednesday.
The case has hit a sensitive nerve in Salem, a town where kids' sports - and especially youth football - are a passion.
"This is a serious allegation for a town like Salem - it would be for any town," Commonwealth's Attorney Fred King said.
It has also pitted the young players' parents against each other - those who support Gaines and those who don't. "It's a sticky situation," said one parent who supports Gaines but nonetheless asked that her name not be used.
The case stems from the team's last practice of the year. It was the night after Halloween and the night before the big game, and the kids were hyper and almost out of control, Gaines and several parents said. To make things worse, the lights were not working at Oakey Field, so they had to do a walk-through of their plays and formations in the dark.
"We had a whole bunch of kids fired up, wired up," said Marty Bolden, an assistant coach. "It was just fight after fight after fight."
One mother, who asked that her name not be used, said she learned about the problems at the practice session as she was driving her son home that night. He was unusually quiet, she said, and when she pressed him about what was wrong, he told her Gaines had threatened him with a belt and had actually used the belt to discipline some of his teammates.
She said her son told her that Gaines asked the players, "Have you ever had your a-- busted with a snake-skin belt?"
She has pressed her concerns with recreation officials and police, but she said she didn't want her name used in the newspaper because "I have to live here. My kid has to play sports - if I can get him to go back again now."
William Hodge, an assistant coach who was at the practice and is the father of one of the players, said Gaines simply took out the belt as a joke, telling the kids that "back in the '60s'' when he was a kid, coaches would use belts to enforce order. "He said: 'But this ain't the '60s; y'all lucky,' just joking around. He said: 'You ever been snakebit?' ... The kids were making a joke of it, saying, 'You want to get snakebit?'''
Hodge estimated that Gaines had the belt out for "two or three minutes."
His wife, Alice Hodge, the team mother, guessed that Gaines had the belt out for "15 minutes to half an hour. I'm not real sure."
"Coach Gaines was a tough coach," she said. "He expected the kids to do what they were told." He worked hard for the players, she said, even as he was getting kidney dialysis treatments and dealing with an arthritic knee.
"There were times he came out there and coached when he could hardly walk," she said.
The day after their final practice, the North Salem Eagles beat the Glenvar Bulldogs, 20-16, to win the Pee Wee Super Bowl. Gaines' 8-year-old son, Keith, the team's top runner, led the way.
But with some parents concerned about what they were hearing about the practice the night before, the elation from the team's victory soon turned to a bitter controversy.
Initially, the assault allegations were handled through the North Salem Recreation Club and the city Parks and Recreation Department. On Nov. 11, a three-member disciplinary committee heard from some of the children and parents along with Gaines and his assistants.
The committee agreed that Gaines had taken some "inappropriate" actions, but concluded he hadn't hit any of the kids. It decided to take care of the case by sending him a letter of reprimand.
Gaines, who has been coaching sports in Salem since he moved from Philadelphia three years ago, is now coaching a recreation basketball squad.
Bolden, his football assistant, said the football season was a long, hard one for the coaches.
He said he was so frustrated by the kids that final night of practice, he left after half an hour and waited in the parking lot. So he didn't see the belt incident.
Gaines probably "made a bad judgment on taking his belt off," but he meant no harm, Bolden said. "God knows I wanted to do it, but I left. It was trying."
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