USC coach Steve Sarkisian told media Wednesday that the program was in a “holding pattern” while the validity of Josh Shaw’s story about jumping from a second-story balcony to save his drowning nephew is handled by campus authorities.
On Monday, USC released a heroic story of Shaw, who was on a second floor balcony during a family party, spotting his 7-year-old nephew who couldn’t swim struggling in the pool. Shaw, with no regard for personal safety, jumped from the balcony, landed on the concrete below, sprained both ankles and managed to roll into the pool to save the drowning boy.
Sarkisian told media Tuesday that the school had received several calls questioning the validity of Shaw’s story. Even though Sarkisian said Shaw had given him no reason to believe the authenticity of the tale, the school is doing its due diligence to make sure it’s accurate.
"In this day in age of college football and head coaches' responsibilities, I'd be foolish not to push everything up the ladder," Sarkisian said. "I think we learned that a couple years ago with a couple other high profile coaches, so everything I've ever done when things come across my desk is to push them to campus authorities and let them do their due diligence.
"When things come back to me, then I can comment on them. Until then, I don't really have much to say on it."
Shaw's sister and the mother of the 7-year-old boy, Asia Shaw, told USA Today she was not at the family party in question and did not know the specifics of what happened. She did confirm her son could not swim.
"The one who was supposed to be watching him turned away for a second," she told USA Today. "And Josh, who is on the balcony, saw the incident and reacted."
Shaw’s injured ankles have him sidelined indefinitely and Sarkisian said there’s no other change in Shaw’s status. He was named a team captain prior to his heroics.
Sarkisian said he did not know how long the investigation would take, but said that it’s not taking away from the team’s preparation for Saturday’s game against Fresno State.
"We haven't spent much time on it at all quite honestly," Sarkisian said. "We've put in too much work over the last nine months to let an hour or two of social media and Internet reports distract us from being a great football team. If it does, then that's not a great sign for us moving forward. We have to be strong enough to handle adversity whether it's on the football field or off the field and continue to hang together and be together."
Shaw has not been available to the media since the story surfaced on Monday and teammates seem to be in the dark as well. Linebacker Hayes Pullard was one of two players made available to the media on Wednesday and he said the team knew about as much as everyone else.
"Him and Sark had a meeting together and we haven't seen him since that day.” Pullard said of Shaw. “We're just leaving it to Coach Sark, he's the head man and that's who we answer to.
“Josh is a great guy, he has great character. I’ve never known him to lie about anything. So, you know, going from what I know, Josh is 100 percent.”
For more USC news, visit TrojanSports.com.
- - - - - - -
Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter! Follow @YahooDrSaturday
And don’t forget to keep up with all of Graham’s thoughts, witty comments and college football discussions on Facebook
from Yahoo Sports http://ift.tt/1nEdGdd
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire