Youngstown school creates conflict resolution program after fight ends football season

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — The Youngstown School District has devised a nine-week conflict resolution plan to help deescalate the tension left from a fight last week between middle school football players at Chaney and East that ended their football season.

Nick Sferra, Athletic Director of Youngtown City Schools, says an internal meeting with all the administrators happened Wednesday. It lasted an hour and a half.

“We did a SWOT analysis — so strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats — kind of put some stuff on the big board, kind of talked about what we could be doing better as a team administratively, what we could do better as coaches, and what could we do better as adults,” Sferra said.

Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor promised Tuesday at the Youngstown City School Board meeting that the schools would do something to help settle the tension parents said remained after the fight.

What was devised was a nine-week program where each week the students will gather. The nine topics will be sports ethics, power of attitude, humility, self-regulation, resilience, scholar/athlete leadership, teamwork, goal setting, and the anatomy of coaching.

“So we have nine different adults that we’ve already reached out to. And again, these are prominent people in the area and some aren’t in the area, some big names, some NFL players, NBA players, some coaches that have won at the highest levels, some legends of Youngstown that want to come back and try to fix these things,” Sferra said.

The program actually began Thursday evening with a private meeting where players from both schools were expected to attend.

“A lot of local pastors, community members, leading members of the community are going to come together and we’re bringing the kids together — express to them kind of how we should hold ourselves, what we should do, ways to handle ourselves when things happen to you, how to be less reactive,” said Sferra.

Sferra said they’re looking into what to do for the cheerleading squads at Chaney and East. One possibility is letting them cheer for the volleyball games.

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