Lower Investigates Incident Involving Youth Wrestling

VILLAS – Lower Township officials are investigating a recent incident involving a wrestling coach and a player on the Recreation Department team.
The boy’s mother, Rachel Stanton, said the coach yelled at and berated her son. She said her son, Kaden, is autistic, and was deeply upset. She’s pulled him from the team, and her parents, both longtime volunteers with the Lower Township Tigers wrestling program, have withdrawn from the team.
According to Stanton, coach Frank Simonsen accused Kaden of a foul while wrestling another player. But she alleges that Simonsen went well beyond what was reasonable in that circumstance.
She accused Simonsen of berating her 10-year-old son in front of parents and other players. She said her son is high functioning, and does not usually tell people that he has been diagnosed as autistic. Instead, he says he’s special.
“He told Kaden he didn’t belong there. No one wanted to wrestle him, and he wasn’t special,” she wrote in an extensive post on social media after the incident.
Attempts to contact Simonsen were unsuccessful. The brother of Lower Township Mayor Erik Simonsen, his family, has been involved in Lower Township youth sports for decades.  His father, also Frank, has had a football field named in his honor for his dedication to coaching.
Mitchell B. Plenn, superintendent of Lower Township Parks and Recreation Department, under which the wrestling program falls, did not respond to a phone message. An emailed request for comment drew a response instead from Robert T. Belasco, an attorney with the office that serves as township solicitor, who said there would be no comment.
“The Township of Lower is in the process of investigating the alleged incident which you refer to in your email. That investigation is ongoing, and accordingly the Township has no comment on this matter at this time,” he wrote.
Mayor Simonsen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Stanton said she immediately pulled her son out of the Lower Township program, and the next day signed him up to wrestle for Middle Township, one of the participants in the same league.
She said she’s waiting for an apology from the Recreation Department.
“This is not something that’s OK to happen to kids,” she said.
Stanton’s mother and father were heavily involved with the wrestling program.
Her father, Mark Bohn, served as head coach of the program, with extensive help from her mother, Cyndi Bohn.
In the spring of 2016, Coach Bohn was honored as volunteer of the month for his work with the program. But he resigned after the incident with Kaden. He did not want to comment for this story, his wife indicated, but Cyndi Bohn confirmed her daughter’s account of the incident.
She said Mark Bohn is a full-time plumber, and decided he didn’t need so much drama from an unpaid position, particularly after she was told she would no longer be able to help with some of the paperwork for the team.
“It takes your life up, with practice three nights a week, matches on Friday and tournaments over the weekend,” she said. As the owner of a local business, she said she did not want a controversy over the team to hurt that business.
According to Bohn, the remaining coaches and officials with the department told the parents and wrestlers only that there was a decision to take the team in a new direction.
Lower Township youth wrestling is a non-profit organization run by volunteers, open to children from kindergarten through eighth grade. The children participate in the South Jersey Youth Wrestling League, which also includes Egg Harbor Township, Hammonton, Mainland, Mays Landing, Mullica, Ocean City, Vineland, Upper Township and Middle Township.
To contact Bill Barlow, email bbarlow@cmcherald.com.