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Jennifer Besler, who claims she suffered emotional distress under the coaching of Daniel Hussong at WW-P in 1995-96,said she plans to use the award to establish a scholarship fund to help athletes at both Trenton and West Windsor-Plainsboro schools. In particular, half will go to WW-P eighth graders who want to attend prep school, she said.
Philip Besler said he will donate his $100,000 award to the Diana Rochford fund. Rochford, a friend of Jennifer Besler’s younger sister Brittany, was a "great athlete and a great kid" who died in a car crash her senior year, Besler said.
The family ordered lunch and casually mulled over the events since Jennifer’s senior year of high school in 1996.
"This case should never have happened," Philip Besler finally said. He said he has already spent about $1 million on the trial. But he had promised his daughter she was going to be the last kid abused by a coach.
The Beslers said emphatically that they believed that what they were doing was for the right reasons.
"I feel bad for Dan Hussong right now," Jennifer said. "He doesn’t realize what he did, and the only thing I ever wanted since April 1996 was an apology."
Other participants who have spent a good portion of their careers in front of an audience, remained tight-lipped throughout the trial and gingerly stepped into the public fore yesterday.
Flanked by his two attorneys and his wife, Lori, Daniel Hussong stood outside the Mercer County civil courthouse and read from a prepared statement before making some careful, off-the-cuff remarks.
"I wish her last year could have ended as happily as the first three," he said.
Hussong said in his statement that he most regretted that the situation had hurt his children.
He added that he "always treated Jennifer fairly and cared for her just like the hundreds of other girls I have coached over my 15-year career."
He said he didn’t know how teaching a player to eat nutritiously could have caused an eating disorder. The Beslers, he said, never complained about his coaching until the season was over.
"If I am guilty of anything," he said, "I’m guilty of trying too hard."
Hussong insists he coached his players hard and demanded excellence, but his behavior "never rose to the level of abuse." He made his players "demand more of themselves than they thought was possible," he said.
Hussong’s attorney, Sharon Moore, said she was sad for coaches and educators because "a decision like this will affect the financial integrity" of schools and that "money will go toward protecting themselves from this type of litigation."
She said the defendants believe the jury "came to a mistaken decision" and that her clients plan to appeal.
"It’s not over yet," she said.
