While we would hardly treat this story from the St. Cloud State school paper as "hard news" considering there is no hint of police action or anything like that, there are elements that are just too irresistible to avoid. Those elements: cheerleaders, alleged swindle and quotes you just can't make up. We also took out the coach's name in our post because at this point all we see are accusations.
The keys:
St. Cloud State cheerleaders are accusing a former coach of swindling them out of money from a cheerleading camp held on campus. The alleged scam? From the story:
Squad members said [the coach] instructed the cheerleaders to pay him directly in the form of personal checks. It was understood that he would then deposit the money into his personal account and pay the camp leaders from the account. "He said it would be faster if we just paid him," Ashley DeMorett, the president of the cheerleading squad said.
The only thing simpler would have been to have them make the checks out to "cash," but we suppose that possibly would have set off alarm bells.
Members of the cheerleading squad said they thought everything had gone well until they received an invoice stating that they had not paid the camp in full. "We knew something was up when we received an invoice from the National Cheerleaders Association saying that we still owed money," DeMorett said. "When we confronted him about it he told us that we should fund raise or donate blood in order to pay the rest."
The upshot? The team is now short on money.
"Right now we have to share uniforms," cheerleader Jenna Holm said. "There are three girls sharing the same uniform because we don't have money to buy new ones."
We're not quite sure how that works and what happens when/if all three have to cheer at the same time. The mind can only handle and process so much information.
Again, the entire story is built around the cheerleaders' side of the story, and there is no police involvement that we can see (though legal action is hinted at). We found an e-mail address for the coach in question and sent him a request for his side of the story. We will certainly follow-up if we hear back from him.
UPDATE: We did have a quick chat with the coach in question, and he indicated he might have more to say tomorrow. The two sides have been in contact since that original story was published Monday, he said.
