High School Soccer Player Gets Jail Sentence For Foul

Daniel Malloy will spend two days in jail for elbowing a Coshocton [Ohio] soccer player during an Oct. 25 regional match.

Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren said the original felonious assault charge against Malloy was amended to assault Thursday in Athens County Municipal Court. Malloy, 18, an Alexander High School student, pleaded no contest.

Malloy's attorney, Skye Petty, had no comment.

"Initially when they first called me about (the case) ... I thought it was generally an accident," Warren said. "It was clear from the tape that he planned to hurt the player from Coshocton, and you saw him look around to see where the officials were."

During a dead ball, T.J. Helbling was flagrantly fouled by Malloy, taking an elbow to the mouth and damaging four of his teeth badly enough that he won't be able to finish the season. Helbling underwent oral surgery to straighten his lower teeth, which were jammed backward at a sharp angle, and to set his jaw which was broken in two places.

The foul sounds pretty nasty, but still . . . . Details here from the Zainesville Times-Recorder.

UPDATE: Apparently inspired by this feeble-minded post, The Curmudgeonly Clerk now has a long and interesting post about sports injury law over at Crescat Sententia.

I guess I let the headline -- "High School Soccer Player Gets Jail Sentence For Foul" -- get the better of me (as I'm sure it was intended to do). Getting jailed for a foul in a high school athletic event seems inherently silly. But the facts here indicate an intentional assault committed after play had stopped. And getting your teeth smashed in and your jaw broken in two places is certainly no picnic.

I'm very familiar with many of the sports injury cases discussed in The Clerk's post because of my practical experience with the firefighter's rule, which is also a tort defense similarly based on assumption of the risk. It's a fascinating area of the law.