The mother of a Rockwall-Heath High School student is suing the school’s former head football coach and 12 assistant coaches after a report found intense workouts left her son and other student athletes hospitalized last year.
Valencia Smith's son — a minor who is unnamed in the lawsuit — was seriously injured during a warmup for an eighth period workout class levied as punishment by then-head coach John Harrell and his assistant coaches, according to a lawsuit filed in Rockwall County district court Monday.
She accused Harrell and the other coaches of negligently forcing the students to do excessive exercise without water or rest, knowing it could cause injury — namely a muscle condition called rhabdomyolysis — and ignoring instructions from the school’s athletic director to not use physical punishment to discipline the athletes.
“This is not a situation where the boys are just complaining because they were tired after a workout,” Mike Sawicki, Smith’s attorney, told KERA News. “Rhabdomyolysis is actually a documented, known, dangerous physical condition that is caused by the overwork that can have permanent severe consequences. Just asking people to tough it out, not seek treatment or not recognize that they might have been injured could have compounded the problems significantly for some of the boys.”
Smith is seeking more than $250,000 in damages. Sawicki said her son is still receiving treatment related to his rhabdomyolysis symptoms but would not go into detail.
Harrell declined to comment when reached by phone Thursday. Rockwall ISD could not be reached for comment — the district is closed until Jan. 6, 2025.
Harrell's attorney Meredith Walker said in a statement Friday Harrell denies any wrongdoing and he attempted to resolve the issue before the suit was filed. She said Harrell is protected by the Texas Education Code, which generally provides professional school employees immunity from actions performed as part of their duties.
"Instead of resolving the matter, Plaintiff included all of the coaches, some of whom were not even present at the practice in question, as defendants," the statement reads. "Mr. Harrell sees this as nothing more than an attempt to overcome the liability limits in the Texas Education Code."
However, this immunity doesn't apply if an employee uses excessive force in disciplining students or negligence that results in bodily injury to students, according to the statute.
At least 26 Rockwall-Heath student athletes were either diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis, which occurs when damaged muscle tissue releases proteins and electrolytes into the blood, or had symptoms consistent with the condition, according to the report. These cases all came from student athletes who participated in workouts during first period athletics on Jan. 4, 5, 6 and 9, 2023, or the eighth period athletics workout on Jan. 6, 2023.
The report states Harrell created a workout plan for the athletes, including what was supposed to be a quick warmup. Harrell said it was his assistant coaches who actually oversaw the workouts while he went to the weight room.
Eighth-period students confirmed they would be assigned pushups for a variety of conduct issues during the warmup, which they said included wearing the wrong clothes, making mistakes, having attitude problems or negative interactions with coaches and peers and not putting in enough effort.
The investigation found coaches would call for the entire group to do pushups rather than individually call out students who made mistakes. Water was available during the workout, but few of the students went to get water, according to the report. During interviews, these students said they would never ask permission to get water during workouts because it would make them look weak.
The report says one student who wanted to wash blood off his knee did try to get water, but couldn’t get it out of the team’s mobile water tank.
The pushup punishments started about six seconds after warmups began, and students would be forced to restart their sets multiple times, according to video evidence detailed in the report. After the last set, Harrell spoke to students in the weight room and an assistant coach told him the group made 23 mistakes. Some students used the calculators on their phones and concluded they did 16 pushups per mistake, or about 369 pushups.
Some parents repeated the claim that their children were forced to do between 300 and 400 pushups without water breaks, but the report found it was unlikely all of the eighth-period students actually did all the nearly 400 pushups based on video.
Later that Friday, Jan. 6, was when the athletes started reporting swelling and dark-colored urine, symptoms consistent with rhabdomyolysis. Harrell said he did not know what the condition was before athletic trainers told him that’s what they believed the athletes were dealing with, according to the report.
Shortly after students were hospitalized, he was on his way to the hospital to visit them before he was called to a meeting with district officials, the report says.
While the investigation found Harrell didn’t intentionally or knowingly cause the outbreak of rhabdomyolysis cases, it nonetheless concluded his workouts were recklessly implemented and endangered the health of his athletes, and he violated the Educators Code of Ethics. The investigation found no evidence the boys were responsible for their own injuries.
Harrell was put on administrative leave shortly after the hospitalizations and later resigned from Rockwall ISD.
Harrell was previously sued in September 2023 by parents Osehotue Okojie and Maria Avila in two separate lawsuits, but Sawicki — who represented those families — said those two cases were settled for an undisclosed amount.
Sawicki’s team was only made aware of the investigative report after those initial suits were filed, he said. He added that Smith's suit is moving forward because an insurance company representing the coaches refused to settle her case.
“I'm not trying to turn Coach Harrell into an evil individual, but he made a mistake based on being kind of negligent about the threats that he should have known about that could affect these boys and did affect these boys,” Sawicki said. “So we're just hoping to hold him accountable.”
The report stated it was possible that other students were diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis but did not seek medical help — and those who did chose not to come forward to the school with their diagnoses.
Parents and students rallied around Harrell after he was put on leave, attending a January 2023 school board meeting wearing “Keep Harrell” shirts and expressing their admiration for his leadership.
But according to the lawsuit, other students and parents were afraid to come forward about their symptoms because of how the school community was reacting to the rhabdomyolysis cases.
Some students said they were bullied online, including in a team Snapchat conversation, according to the complaint. Some parents said online comments insulted the injured players and questioned their manhood. The suit called it a “whisper campaign” that discouraged the affected students from complaining.
Messages between coaches showed some of them believed the students’ symptoms were caused by the use of nutritional supplements. At least one assistant coach allegedly reached out to students to find any ties between their rhabdomyolysis diagnoses and supplement use, but there was no specific evidence to support this claim, according to the report.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services confirmed last year it was conducting an investigation into what happened but did not release any other details. A DFPS spokesperson said Thursday the details of the investigation are confidential.
The report recommended Rockwall ISD hire a full-time certified strength and conditioning specialist to work with coaches while designing workout plans. Investigators also recommended the district ensure the athletic director properly oversees offseason workouts, and that coaches and athletic administrators receive rhabdomyolysis training.
The hope for this lawsuit, Sawicki said, is that this case will prevent other students from developing rhabdomyolysis, which can cause permanent disability or even death.
“It just requires some common sense at the beginning,” he said. “It's like, you know, doing the speed limit or stopping when you see the light's red — you just have to pay attention to the threat.”
This story has been updated with comments from John Harrell's attorney.
Got a tip? Email Toluwani Osibamowo at tosibamowo@kera.org. You can follow Toluwani on X @tosibamowo.
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