ROCHESTER — Following a lengthy and contentious school board meeting on Thursday night, Rochester football coach Derek Leonard has been suspended for Friday’s regular-season finale against Sacred Heart-Griffin after allegations of hazing and bullying in the Rochester football program.

“We're going to play tomorrow,” Leonard said Thursday to a crowd of supporters after the announcement. “I'm thankful to all you. I love this place so much, and I love you.”

Leonard has led the Rockets to nine state championships since 2010 and won his 200th career game in Week 3 over Lincoln. He is 204-38 in his 20-year career as Rochester coach.

Assistant coach Derrick Nelson will lead Rochester (6-2) on Friday against SHG (5-3) at Rocket Booster Stadium.

Leonard was emotional as he addressed the crowd that was, at times, angry at the board members.

“This is a great place, man, and I told them, I said, ‘These guys love me and they love this program,’ and I said, ‘That's why they're (mad),’” Leonard said. “I get the anger to a point, but we also, we got to settle down. These kids can play tomorrow.

“I promise you, I give you my word, OK, that they'll be able to play, and we'll be, everything will be good. I promise you, we'll come out of this on the other end.”

After a lengthy closed session on Thursday night, the Rochester school board voted 4-1 to accept recommendations after an investigation from Edwardsville attorney Tueth Keeney, which included the one-game suspension for Leonard.

On Friday afternoon, the Rochester school district released those recommendations as part of its public statement.

“While the investigation confirmed that bullying occurred, a lack of evidence identifying specific individual participants resulted in a recommendation that no disciplinary action could be taken against individual students,” the statement read. “The investigation concluded that, although coaches were aware that gatherings took place on Thursday evenings on school property, there was no follow-up inquiry or guidance provided by the coaching staff. This lack of oversight was determined to be inconsistent with the responsibilities outlined in the Illinois Administrative Code.

“For these reasons, the Rochester CUSD #3A Board of Education adopted the report of the investigator, including the recommendations, which included head coach Derek Leonard being sidelined from coaching at the game against Sacred Heart Griffin on Friday, October 25, 2024.”

On Thursday, district legal counsel Susan Nichols, an attorney at Robbins Swartz, read from a prepared statement after the school board came out of a closed session that lasted more than 2½ hours.

"In late September 2024, the school district received an anonymous formal complaint with an allegation of bullying and hazing during a non-sanctioned, after-school-hours gathering of football players — without coaches, teachers or staff present.

“This gathering is known as ‘Bleachers,’ where football players come together for social, athletic and team-building activities.

"It was determined that some football players used airsoft guns or CO2 pistols to target other team members at the football field — again, after school hours with no coaches or other supervising adults there. The investigator found that other activities were taking place including what is known as cookie races, where students placed cookies in between their buttocks, raced each other and the loser ate the cookie. The students also participated in what is termed as ‘wrestle offs,’ where lower classmen players were matched up by upperclassmen to wrestle against each other.”

The prepared statement also added that, under Illinois school code, any public school district is mandated to investigate allegations of bullying or hazing.

The meeting was held in the Rochester High School library to accommodate the overflow crowd. However, with no microphones or audio equipment, most of the audience had problems hearing what was said. It was emotionally charged from the beginning and hit a climax when the board tried to move on to its regular business on the agenda.

Prior to moving to closed session, president Dr. Christie Magoulias said that board members Chris Jewell and Aimee Johnson had resigned their positions, effective Thursday, after receiving copies of the independent report.

“We’ve lost two board members, who resigned effective today,” Magoulias said to the crowd. “I’m sharing that with you now to be transparent, why there are only five of us sitting here. They received the report on Tuesday evening, and they resigned this afternoon. That is something we’ll tackle in the near future — in the very near future, according to Illinois code and law. But we’re not going to tackle that tonight because it is not in our agenda. We can’t since it’s not in our agenda. We won’t be discussing it in closed session or open session. This is as much as I’m able to say about that right now.”

The first business the board took following closed session was to vote to accept the outside counsel’s recommendations. Magoulias was the lone dissenting vote while Amy Reynolds, Don Carley, Bob Chiles and Todd Hannah voted to accept.

During the roll call voting, several members of the public were vocally critical of the board, the lack of microphones, and demanding to know what the recommendations were. The board then allowed public comment, where current and former players, plus parents and Steve Taft — who was one of those instrumental on Rochester beginning its football program, which culminated in the first varsity season in 1996 — all spoke in favor of Leonard and to his character. Some former players defended the tradition of the “bleachers,” and said it was a team-bonding exercise.

The meeting was the first time the rumors swirling around hazing and bullying within the football program had been addressed by the district.

Magoulias also said she and the board stands with everyone involved.

“Some folks have shown me the image circulating that says we stand by our players, and our coaches, and our administration and our building administration and I 100% agree,” Magoulias said before adjourning to closed session.

“That is absolutely right. I want to emphasis that we do, too. We stand by them as well. I’m glad to see all of them included. Please know that we do too, and that’s why we spend our free time in this unpaid elected position. There are tough things to do and we’re trying to go about it the right way.”