Ohio football player kicked off team, suspended over poem

Associated Press

RITTMAN

A high school football player in northeastern Ohio says he was kicked off the team and suspended from school after he wrote a poem for English class critical of his team.

WJW-TV reports that 16-year-old Nick Andre was punished after reading the poem in class. The assignment was to write about something that made him angry, and he took out his frustration on the 1-7 Rittman High School gridiron team.

The principal of the school southwest of Akron said the teen “wrote a mean and disrespectful poem about another student and our athletic director/head coach.” The principal called it “harassment.”

Andre thinks he had a right to express himself. But he was suspended from school for four days and removed from the team for its final two games.