For anyone entrusted with taking care of a young adult there are plenty of concerns in the world.  Some of those concerns involve life-altering dangers involving drugs or firearms.

Other concerns may not be that serious, but they must be directly taken care of nonetheless.  This is the type of issues authorities at Twin Spruce Junior High are currently taking a look at. 

This week they are working on making sure what is called “body boxing” does not become a serious problem.

“The rules of body boxing are that there is to be no hitting in the face or head, and hitting in the crotch” explained Jeff Wasserburger, Assistant Principal at Twin Spruce Junior High.  “And so it’s actually more of a friendly competition to them.  In fact in many of the cases the boys that were involved were friends, and still are friends.”

A number of citations were given out this week for these body boxing bouts, which were recorded at the school with a cell phone.

“At this moment I think there’s like 9 tickets that have been written” said School Resource Officer, Sherman Taylor.  “There’s still 4 that are pending to date for follow-up.  And then as I said earlier the participants in the fight, they’re going to be cited, if not already they will be cited.  And then the young man that videotaped it, or recorded it, they’ve received citations also for basically assisting in the fight.”

Wasserburger said there have been 4 fights they know of so far that have been videotaped. 

Although body boxing does not rank up there with drug abuse or weapons charges, Twin Spruce Junior High Principal Dave Foreman assures the public this issue will be taken seriously.

“We’re going to have zero-tolerance for this stuff.  We’ve got 800 kids here and if they do this stuff, we’re going to do our very best to find out; we’re going to do our very best to punish them to the fullest extent.” 

Foreman continued, “We’re going cite them by the police, we’re going to put them in in-school suspension and if it happens again, we’re going to have expulsion proceedings that take place right here and they’re not going to be students at Campbell County School District anymore.”

Even thought the faculty will be keeping an eye of this issue, they will not let it distract them from their real focus.  Wasserburger explained it’s still “business as usual at Twin Spruce Junior High.  We’re working very hard on our test scores and preparing for our PAWs test this coming spring.”  

Foreman added to his associate principal’s point by saying they were very successful in regards to their core focus last year and he is looking forward to that type of success again.

“Well you know what we’re working really hard to have a good school year.”  Foreman concluded, “It culminates right about March 8 when the window opens for the PAWs test, and I think our kids – like they were last year – and our staff have worked very hard and we’re hopefully ready to go with this.”