Sheriff also conducting investigation since coach doubles as deputy sheriff, SRO
James (“Jim”) Giannotti resigned Monday as the head coach for the wrestling team at Southern High School, according to Alamance-Burlington school officials.
ABSS officials have not explicitly said that Giannotti resigned over an alleged incident involving a student-athlete but have said that an internal investigation is underway.
Meanwhile, that alleged incident involving the student-athlete is also the subject of a separate investigation by sheriff Terry Johnson, inasmuch as Giannotti’s full-time job is as a deputy sheriff, Johnson confirmed in an interview with The Alamance News on Tuesday. In that interview, Johnson said he understood that Giannotti resigned after he was initially suspended from his coaching assignment.
Johnson, who was away at a sheriff’s conference when the announcement broke Monday, said Tuesday that Giannotti would not be back at Southern in a coaching capacity. “I’ve told him [via another sheriff’s official], ‘you can coach or you can be a deputy sheriff. You can’t be both,’” Johnson recounted Tuesday.
Other sources have told the newspaper that one or more assistant wrestling coaches, who have been suspended “pending an ongoing investigation,” are also employees of the sheriff’s office.
However, Johnson told the newspaper that he was unaware of any other of his deputies serving in that capacity. Johnson noted that his office’s policy is that permission must be sought, and granted, in order to have any other work obligations outside of the sheriff’s office.
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This marks the second time in a year that Southern High School has been mired in a coaching controversy. Then-superintendent Dr. Dain Butler fired the Patriots’ head football coach, Walter “Fritz” Hessenthaler, from his coaching position on November 3, 2023 – two hours before the Patriots were to face the Orange High School Panthers in the first-round Class 3-A playoffs – due to his alleged harsh treatment of one of his players.
In the earlier episode, ABSS officials would only allude at the time to a “zero-tolerance” policy for certain types of conduct and the school system’s desire to maintain “student safety and well-being” while holding employees to the highest possible standard of professional conduct.
In an email to the wrestling team on Monday, Southern High School principal Kristy Mills struck a similar tone, citing her desire to ensure the safety and well-being of student athletes. Her email, addressed to “SA Wrestling Families and Athletes,” made no direct reference to the chain of events that supposedly preceded Giannotti’s resignation earlier that day.
Giannotti has worked part-time for ABSS for more than 20 years, in several different capacities, according to information that school officials furnished Wednesday in response to a public records request from The Alamance News.
By day, Giannotti is employed as a corporal with the Alamance County sheriff’s office and specifically as a school resource officer at E.M. Holt Elementary School, ABSS officials confirmed for the newspaper Wednesday.
Giannotti’s resignation as the wrestling coach at Southern High School comes halfway into the season – and just days after a tournament, the Jim King Invitational, held last Saturday at Orange High School in Hillsborough, where three of Southern’s wrestlers placed second, third, and fourth.
The Alamance News has been told by non-school sources that the changes in the coaching staff for the Patriots’ wrestling team allegedly stem from their alleged failure to report a concussion that a student wrestler reportedly sustained at a practice on last Tuesday, December 3.
Some Southern High School community members have described the injured athlete as an underclassman who was forced to wrestle every member of the team, one by one, as a form of “punishment” for an argument with fellow wrestler. That wrestler is a junior at Southern High School and the son of the now-former wrestling coach. The newspaper has been unable to verify that the allegations stem from some intra-team disagreement involving the coach’s son.
The newspaper has also been unable to verify claims that, after the argument, coach Giannotti told the underclassman he could “either be suspended from the team, or face the circle of death.” That exercise has been likened to the “bull in the ring” drill in football, where one player is placed at the center of a circle, while the other players take turns running in and tackling him.
At one point, the underclassman wrestler apparently got sick, leaving the gym at one point to vomit. Coach Giannotti is said to have left the practice, leaving his assistants in charge, and no one reported the wrestler’s injuries.
The injured wrestler was later taken to a hospital, where he was treated for a laceration to the head, diagnosed with a concussion, and released, according to a source. Neither the source, who said he knows the injured wrestler’s family, nor the player’s family, would agree to be interviewed on the record.
“It started with the heavyweight [wrestlers], and by the time he got to the lightweight [wrestlers], he couldn’t even wrestle them, he was so tired,” the source said Tuesday, estimating that the underclassman had been forced to go head-to-head with 20 teammates.
Principal tells wrestling team in an email that their coach has resigned, no one else is available
Though there has been widespread speculation that Giannotti and several assistant coaches were fired as a result of the incident, Southern High School principal Kristy Mills said Monday in an email to Southern’s wrestlers and their families that the “head coach” had “resigned” and that several “coaches” had been “suspended, pending an ongoing investigation.”
Neither Giannotti nor any of the assistant coaches was identified by name in Mills’ email.
“At this time, none of our other wrestling coaches are available to lead the team,” Mills wrote her email to the team on Monday. She also informed the wrestling team in her email that a practice scheduled for Monday, December 9, and two meets scheduled for Tuesday (December 10) and Wednesday (December 11), had been cancelled.
Citing the school system’s practice of providing confidentiality for “personnel matters,” Mills’ didn’t explicitly address the alleged injuries to the student wrestler in her email to the wrestling team but did say that the “safety and well-being of our student athletes remain our top priority.”
Pressed by The Alamance News about the “employment status” of the assistant wrestling coaches, ABSS chief communications officer Emily-Lynn Adkins said Wednesday, “Although volunteer coaches are not employed, they are no longer with the team so the group has no distractions and can continue to work together and compete this season.”
Athletic coaches who aren’t full-time ABSS employees are typically appointed by school officials, subject to approval by the school board as part of the semi-monthly personnel reports presented in a closed session at each board meeting.
No comment from those directly involved
The Alamance News attempted to question the parents of the injured wrestler but had not heard back by press time Wednesday night.
The newspaper also sought to contact Giannotti through the sheriff’s department to ask him about the alleged chain of events during the wrestling practice on December 3, as well as about the subsequent claims that he had been fired from his coaching job at Southern.
The sheriff’s spokesman told the newspaper Wednesday morning, “Because the sheriff’s office has initiated an investigation, none of the parties [with the sheriff’s office] will make a comment at this time.”
The spokesman also acknowledged that, while any allegations regarding Giannotti’s performance as the wrestling coach at Southern fall under the supervision of ABSS officials, the sheriff felt it was appropriate to investigate the matter. “None of the parties are going to talk about it until the investigation is closed,” he reiterated.
In response to a public records request by The Alamance News, ABSS officials confirmed that Giannotti, 47, had been employed with ABSS since January 3, 2000. He initially began his tenure with ABSS as an assistant coach in the Exceptional Children’s program; in February 2004, Giannotti became a substitute teacher and substitute bus driver.
Giannotti is also an assistant football coach at Western High School, according to ABSS.
For his duties as the wrestling coach at Southern, Giannotti had been paid a stipend of $2,133 per season. The stipend for his football coaching duties at Western High School is $2,553 per season, based on the information ABSS furnished in response to the newspaper’s public records request.
The school system’s human resources department told the newspaper Wednesday that coaching stipends vary according to levels of experience, and coaching stipends are generally paid at the end of each season.
The high school wrestling season started on October 30 (the first practice date) and runs through early next year, with state and regional championship matchups beginning the first weekend in February.
In the earlier episode involving the firing of Southern’s football coach, ABSS officials repeatedly told a raucous crowd of supporters at their December 4, 2023 school board meeting: “Coaching duties are an at-will assignment. Coaching decisions are final and are not appealable to the board.”
The coach at the center of that controversy, Hessenthaler, was a full-time ABSS employee who was also reassigned from his teaching position at Southern to a high school social studies teaching position at the Alamance Virtual School, which has no athletic teams.
Hessenthaler is now employed as a social studies teacher at Southeast High School, school officials told the newspaper late Wednesday afternoon.
Concerns emerge over Giannotti’s position as an SRO
Meanwhile, other school officials said Wednesday that they’ve started receiving calls and emails from ABSS parents, wanting to know why Giannotti remains employed as an SRO at E.M. Holt Elementary School.
That job, and his assignment as an SRO at E.M. Holt, which is under the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s office, is entirely separate from his former part-time job as the wrestling coach at Southern High School.
All SRO positions are funded under annual “memorandums of understanding” (MOUs) that the school system has with the sheriff’s office and with each of the municipal police departments in Alamance County to provide school resource officers to the ABSS schools within their respective jurisdictions.
ABSS officials confirmed for the newspaper Wednesday that any decisions concerning Giannotti’s employment with the sheriff’s office and his assignment as an SRO are subject to the sheriff’s discretion, as outlined in the MOUs that school board members approve each sprin
