PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Four coaches of the 2025 Cheltenham High School football team are ordered to stand trial on charges that they failed to properly notify officials about the locker room beating of a 15-year-old player.
Former Cheltenham football coaches Terrence Tolbert, Benjamin Johnson, D.J. McFadden, and Ralph Burnley are ordered to stand trial on charges of endangering the welfare of a child and conspiracy for failing to report a locker room beating of a 10th-grade player who required medical treatment on his genitals.
The now-16-year-old testified on Sept. 3, 2025, that his teammates surrounded him after he was pulled into the locker room. One player stomped on his genitals; others tried to poke him in the buttocks with a broomstick.
The 16-year-old testified that when he told a coach about the beating, he didn’t mention the broomstick out of embarrassment. The coach immediately notified other coaches and told him to tell his mother, but he testified he didn’t want to because she would make him quit the team.
Prosecutor Samantha Cauffman said text messages show the coaches tried to protect the program instead of the player’s well-being.
“They tried to suppress the truth. And that violates their duty of protection and support of a child,” Cauffman said. “They placed an impossible burden on a 15-year-old kid when the burden really should have been on the adults in the room.”
Burnley’s lawyer Shaka Johnson called the charges “Monday morning quarterbacking.”
“When I say ‘Monday morning quarterbacking,’ I’m saying, now we all speak, you know, full-throated on this issue of a broom. But none of that was given to any of the coaching staff all of last year.”
A formal arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 28.
