Richard, again, in a public way, thank you. I will make the following comments and be done with it.

I am saddened to be making this post and am sickened by some of the comments I see continue to be made on these forums. I will say the following and will leave it at that. I will assure you there is much more to the situations that have been mentioned than anyone posting here has realized. It is unfortunate that the initial post on the Wichita Eagle message boards that specifically mentioned my sons name was made by a high school student at Derby, having serious issues of their own who in reality knew very little about the events in Garden City. I have emails with that individual and their name where they admit to making up most of the story. Of course I have had very few emails or phone calls asking for the truth, only reading and hearing about people making assumptions about my son on issues they simply don’t know. I know some who have made some of these comments, and started the “rumors”. As to why one would place their need to know over the needs of a minor child is beyond me, especially when the issues have been and are being dealt with. To know some of those people deeply saddens me because we thought some of those people were friends who would have at least had the decency to contact us, as opposed to having to contact others or speaking to others besides us. Nathan has been wrestling since he was 6 years old. It would likely be better to judge an individual based on what you have known of them over 10 years instead of what you think you know of them over the last 3 weeks. There is much more going on than many realize, unfortunately 80% of what has been said is untrue, and another 10% I hope Nathan has the opportunity to legally clear his name. Have there been mistakes? Yes, those have been addressed and dealt with; some will continue to be dealt with. Thankfully we have been in communication with Coach Ross and he has been wonderful through the whole situation. There have been other issues that have caused us to seek legal counsel; again, any real friends can contact us. There are issues like kids’ club coaches talking to officials and other coaches about Nathan mentioning things totally untrue. Unfortunately some don’t realize how their gossip and lies affect others. In an age where depression and suicide is so prevalent among High School students, some need to take into consideration the power of their words to make things worse for a kid, especially when spoken with a presumption they know the “truth” and “full story” of what happened. I will leave it at that other than to say, there are a lot of people, including my son that have done wrong. I suspect the stories will continue to get glamorized, that is sad, it is sad that at least on these message boards one is presumed to be guilty without ever having a chance to prove their innocence. It seems as if there are those who still prefer a public crucifixion, it is sad when that happens to people who don’t deserve it. People were willing to kill Jesus though, why should we expect anything different for a high school kid? There are a lot of perfect people willing to throw the first stone; personally, I hope I’m not one of them.