Coaches Fired in Starter Gun Threat

A school board has fired two high football school coaches accused of holding a starter’s pistol to a student’s head and threatening to hang him from the ceiling by his hands unless he improved his grades enough to play football next year.

Trustees of the New Waverly school district voted 5 to 0 Tuesday night to dismiss football coach and athletic director Larry Spacek, 34, and assistant coach Steve Ramsey, 37.

The coaches had been suspended after Thea Clark, the mother of 14-year-old Joshua Maxey, complained they took her son into the coaches’ office Nov. 27 ostensibly to encourage him to bring up failing grades so he could play football next year.

Maxey testified that Spacek tried to tie his hands with an extension cord and threatened to hang him from the ceiling and that Ramsey then went to his truck to get a starter’s pistol.

Ramsey held him in a hammerlock and pointed the pistol at his temple, but Spacek told him not to fire the gun, the boy said.

In a 3 1/2-hour board hearing requested by the coaches, Spacek and Ramsey denied they had ever threatened Maxey with a cord or pistol, as the boy and five witnesses had said.

Superintendent Alvin Davis, who recommended the firings, said the two coaches never denied the allegations when he questioned them the day of and the day after the incident.

Huntsville lawyers Hal Ridley and Robert DeLong, who represent Spacek and Ramsey, said they will file lawsuits alleging their clients were wrongfully dismissed. Spacek had just completed his second year of coaching the Bulldogs; Ramsey was in his first year.

The Walker County sheriff’s office is investigating the incident.