KNKX youth soccer investigation, supported by ProJourn, prompts coaching suspensions

This story was originally published by ProJourn, a collaboration between the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, Microsoft, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to provide free legal assistance to journalists and newsrooms.

In July 2023, KNKX, an NPR member station serving western Washington state, published an investigation examining allegations of misconduct against coaches in an area youth soccer league.

The story, reported by arts and culture reporter Grace Madigan, was based on interviews with more than 20 players, coaches, parents, and others connected to the elite Crossfire Premier League. What they described was disturbing.

As Madigan reported, sources accused two Crossfire coaches of “racial and sexual harassment, player endangerment, and inappropriate touching of underage players.” In addition to highlighting the misconduct allegations, the story described how difficult it can be to hold people involved in youth soccer accountable, thanks to a complex web of soccer entities in the United States that is responsible for policing leagues.

The investigation had an immediate impact.

Less than two weeks after KNKX published the story, U.S. Soccer confirmed that it had suspended the coaching licenses of the two coaches, and Crossfire Premier confirmed that it had temporarily disqualified one of them from coaching. A former Crossfire Premier coach who had previously reported harassment she had endured in the league also told KNKX that one of the entities responsible for protecting athletes had reopened a previously closed investigation into the two coaches accused of wrongdoing.

Former KNKX news director, Florangela Davila, says this kind of story was sort of a departure for the local NPR station, which focuses more on daily news rather than deep-dive investigations and does not have in-house legal counsel. She says the investigation was made possible by ProJourn, a partnership between the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Microsoft, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to provide local journalists and newsrooms free legal help with pre-publication review and public records access. ProJourn connected Davila with a team of attorneys from Microsoft and Davis Wright Tremaine who thoroughly vetted the investigation.

Davila said: “As much as other reporters can give you reporting tips or suggest paper trails or interviews, there’s still something unique about having a lawyer’s eyes on something (…) They got as invested in the story as we did, which felt really nice. It felt like we were a team.”

Since its publication, this story has won the following awards:

• The Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for Radio Investigative Reporting
• The Public Media Journalists Association’s first place for Investigative Reporting; and
• The Regional Edward R. Murrow Investigative Reporting Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association​

Read the full KNKX story here.