JV coach suspended for cemetery stop

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MARCELLUS, N.Y. -- The coach of a junior varsity football team has been suspended for making his players lie down in a central New York cemetery in an effort to motivate them after a loss.

The superintendent of the Marcellus school district outside Syracuse announced Thursday that coach Jim Marsh has been suspended for two weeks without pay.

Marsh, whose offer to resign was refused, will donate his remaining coaching salary to St. Francis Xavier cemetery, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported.

Marsh's team was returning from a loss Sept. 24 when he had the bus pull over at a cemetery and told the players to lie down in between and on the graves. The coach then talked to them about the importance of playing hard.

"(It) caused more confusion than understanding among adolescent players," Marcellus superintendent Craig Tice told the Post-Standard. "The unintended consequences outweighed the intended outcome."

Marsh apologized to his players and their parents during a meeting Thursday night, telling them he was trying to inspire the team by borrowing from a scene in "Remember the Titans."

"He took the responsibility," Tice said, explaining why he did not fire Marsh, the newspaper reported. "You probably could have talked to some who would like his resignation. But you would have found just as many who supported him. I can't make everybody happy. I felt this is an inspired solution that will lead to healing."

In "Remember the Titans," actor Denzel Washington portrays a coach who takes his players on a run through a former Civil War battleground in Gettysburg, Pa.

"Take a lesson from the dead," Washington's character says as the players stop to rest, "that if we don't come together right now in this hallowed ground, we, too, will be destroyed."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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