Sione Pauni poses for a portrait on Thursday.

Pictures of Sione Pauni are seen on the floor after the contents of his football locker were thrown on the floor and stepped by teammates.

Sione Pauni poses for a portrait on Thursday.

Pictures of Sione Pauni are seen on the floor after the contents of his football locker were thrown on the floor and stepped by teammates.

When Sione Pauni heard and felt a pop in his back deadlifting last February while training for Logan High School’s football team, he reported the incident to the head coach, Bart Bowen.

As Sione remembers it, Bowen didn’t take any action and instead told the young man’s gym teacher that he was able to fully participate in activities.

Eight months later, Sione can’t walk without the assistance of forearm crutches. According to his dad, Lopi Pauni, doctors have said the road to recovery would be far less long and treacherous had his son’s injury been given immediate attention.

Instead, Bowen treated the injury as an over exaggeration and told Sione to stop seeking attention. Though Sione said the coach allowed him to do stretches rather than lifts in training, his legs began to feel numb. Eventually, he texted a different coach and stopped going. He never received a response.

Sione stayed home from school for a few days and saw a doctor who gave him a note dismissing him from physical activities.

Bowen gave Sione his own take of the situation once he returned to school and entered the weight-lifting class full of fellow football team members.

“When I walked in, he was like, ‘Why are you walking like that?’” Sione said. “He’s like, ‘It’s not that bad, you’re milking it, nobody has sympathy for you, stop walking like that.’”

An older member of the team joined Bowen in claiming the freshmen was faking an injury, and when Sione spoke back to the player, Bowen reportedly kicked the younger athlete out of the class.

Sione’s dad picked him up, and he didn’t return to school for a few more days as his legs began to feel worse.

“My neighbor that’s a doctor took me into his office then got an X-ray,” Sione recalled. “From the hospital, I got ambulanced to primary and got, like, surgery.”

Doctors diagnosed Sione with a slipped and bulging disk. They said the injury “almost completely” cut a nerve to his legs.

On the day of the surgery, Lopi texted Bowen, informing him of the situation. He said his son would take months to recover from the injury Bowen had deemed as an exaggeration.

“There’s a lesson to be learned here,” the text read. “If a kid says his hurt, it’s best to show that maybe you care about your player as a coach … The kids safety should be the number priority of a coach. We learn this in little league and it shouldn’t change in any level of any sport.”

Bowen responded with two short sentences.

“Sorry to hear that,” he texted. “I hope he recovers quickly.”

Lopi hasn’t heard from the coach since.

After he returned to school in a wheelchair, Sione had one last encounter with Bowen. He told the coach he had no intentions of transferring schools, but Bowen reportedly told him he had heard differently from the boy’s friends.

The coach removed him from the football group chat and deleted his account on Hudl, a social platform where the coach regularly communicates with his players.

Despite his plans to stay at Logan High, Sione said he was bullied and harassed to the point where he did transfer.

“When I was at school, people would like, grab my wheelchair,” Sione said, “and like pretend to push me down the stairs.”

The bullying initially came from football players, but Sione said many other classmates eventually started to take part in the shunning and cruel jokes.

According to a former player, Bowen also kept the teasing alive in Sione’s absence.

Chief Toalepai, a sophomore attending Logan High School, said he used to play on the team. Sione’s experience is one of the reasons he decided not to play this fall.

“That team — they weren’t really like a family,” Toalepai said. “No one really connected, and I think you need that to be a good football team.”

Toalepai said Bowen was accepting of him until he found out he was friends with Sione.

“He stopped caring,” he said.

Toalepai said Bowen would reference Sione’s situation to the team throughout team training sessions last spring.

“The coach was just like making smart remarks about it, saying like ‘Oh, I hope no one hurts their back,’” Toalepai said. He recalled Bowen making those jokes up until he left the team.

Toalepai said he heard from other players that after Sione was injured, Bowen threw everything out of Sione’s locker onto the floor, telling the team they could take what they wanted. Although Toalepai personally didn’t witness this, he did see players step on his friend’s belongings, apparently as a way of insulting their former teammate.

Sione also heard about the incident, but not before he tried to retrieve his gear only to find his locker sealed with a different combination.

“There was a lot of clothes,” Sione recalled. “I didn’t get anything back.”

One of Sione’s friends sent him a picture of an item lying on the ground after others had stepped on it — it was a sheet of his school pictures.

Sione — who is now attending Fast Forward Charter High School — said his injury also landed him in summer school after Logan High teachers reportedly declined to grant him disability relief under an administration-sanctioned 504 plan.

Such plans, named after Section 504 of 1973’s Rehabilitation Act, are meant to help disabled students and protect them from discrimination.

“The hospital actually contacted the school and told them to pause his grades because he was getting A’s,” Lopi said. “They didn’t do that.”

Throughout the family’s ordeal, they haven’t been contacted by any coaches beyond the correspondence mentioned. Only one member of the school’s administration — who is also a friend of the Pauni family — has reached out.

“I see one of the coaches at like the gym almost every day,” Sione said. “He’s never talked to me. He always glares at me. Same as like other players.”

Bowen declined to comment on the accusations when contacted by The Herald Journal this week, and messages to Logan City School District Athletic Director Mitchell Argyle and Logan High Principal Daryl Guymon were left unanswered.

Logan City School District Superintendent Frank Schofield did not respond to an email asking him about the district’s policies towards coaches and their responses towards claims of injury.

Shana Longhurst, the district’s director of communications and public relations, said the district is unable to comment on the incident, saying policy and law prohibits public discussion of particular student or personnel issues.

Longhurst did say administration and staff have guidelines to help them determine how to interact with students.

“I do know that all of our administration and staff, if anything has been brought to them regarding medical condition or injury that that would be honored,” Longhurst said. “They have signed policy agreements, and they abide by those.”

Toalepai looks up to how his friend has handled his hardship.

“He was just strong for being able to go through that and like not lashing out to any of the coaches,” he said. “I probably would’ve lashed out.”

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