Football practice isn’t supposed to look like this. At Blanche Ely High School in Pompano Beach, a routine workout turned chaotic when an assistant coach allegedly started throwing punches at his own players.
Assistant coach Jamir Clarke faces four counts of child abuse after police say he punched a student during a heated argument and then turned on others who tried to intervene. What started as trash talk between the coach and the player quickly exploded into a brawl.
The incident comes at a time when high school football is already facing many issues. Just recently, a player argued over coaches accused of encouraging rough play that left a teenager seriously hurt.
A Violent Afternoon At High School Practice
According to deputies, Clarke called one player a slur, then hit him in the face after the teen admitted to posting something negative about someone tied to Clarke.
Students rushed to break it up, but that only escalated the chaos. Clarke began throwing punches at everyone nearby.
“He hit our football player first and then everybody just retaliated,” one student told Local 10 News. “He just got surrounded by everybody and he just started throwing punches at everybody.” Deputies later reported three students injured and a cracked mirror in the weight room.
When officers reached the scene, Clarke wasn’t there. Staff helped them unlock a door to the locker room, where they found him sitting cross-legged on the floor with the lights off. Deputies arrested him immediately.
In court Wednesday, prosecutor Eric Linder raised concerns over Clarke’s size, noting that at 6-foot-7 and 400 pounds, his claim of self-defense didn’t match the risk posed to students.
Clarke’s problems stretch beyond Blanche Ely. At Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, where he works as a campus monitor, a video from earlier this month shows him fighting with students in a bathroom. Broward County Public Schools has reassigned him while reviewing both cases.
Clarke remains in Broward County Main Jail on $30,000 bond. If he posts it, he’ll live under house arrest with GPS monitoring and no contact with victims.
For Clarke, the fight ahead is no longer on the field but in court.
