Curling chair resigns in wake of soccer abuse investigation
This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.
Please enable Javascript to watch this video
The chair of the University of South Carolina’s curling club abruptly resigned Wednesday after the university’s newly-formed Committee on Student Conduct began investigating allegations of abuse by a former team member.
The club’s board of directors began investigating Tuesday night after a video of former and current club members abusing a referee was posted to YouTube.
Two former members of the South Carolina team, Justin Anderson and Brian Smith, were arrested and charged with misdemeanor child abuse and are jailed without bond. It was unclear Wednesday whether they had retained lawyers or have an attorney to represent them.
A video posted on YouTube shows Anderson, the president of the club, yelling at a referee during a match, threatening him with a curling stick.
“I don’t care!” Anderson says as the referee, Dave Allen, tries to get away from him.
The video, called “Brian Smith’s Revenge,” was not posted online until Wednesday morning.
The incident was the latest salvo in the most high-profile child abuse scandal in college athletics this year.
The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, also a member of the NCAA, announced last month it had taken the extraordinary step of terminating two star basketball players, DeAndre Ayton and Malik Allen, due to “inappropriate and unprofessional conduct.” The two players had been star basketball players at Pembroke since they were freshmen at their hometown school in North Carolina and were among those who had been recruited by UNC-Pembroke’s basketball coach.
North Carolina’s basketball program was also placed on non-contact probation while the school dealt with a separate investigation. At the same time, the school’s football coach was indicted on federal racketeering charges, and the school’s athletics director resigned.
This fall, the SEC and Big Ten, two of the three conferences that make up college