A coach for a Colorado youth ski team was charged with sexually assaulting a preteen skier during a team trip to New Mexico in March, court records show.
Jared Hedges, 48, was arrested March 21 at Taos Ski Valley and charged with two felonies after the boy told authorities Hedges had sexually assaulted him. Hedges was a coach for Team Summit Colorado, a youth ski club at Copper Mountain that focuses on developing young athletes.
He did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.
Hedges served as head coach for the team’s alpine racing program for skiers under 14. He is no longer a coach for the club, executive director CB Bechtel said in a statement on the club’s website Thursday.
“The nature of this allegation is both shocking and horrifying, and I want to assure you Team Summit is responding with the utmost seriousness and urgency,” Bechtel said in the statement. “We are cooperating fully with the investigation authorities have underway.”
The club, which is “gold certified” by U.S. Ski and Snowboard, is a feeder for elite athletes, said Jason Jordan, an attorney for the boy’s family. The national ski and snowboard association uses the gold certification to denote the top 10% of clubs that have longstanding records of success.
The boy, whom The Denver Post is not identifying, said Hedges groped and assaulted him after the boy laid down to sleep at one of two cabins the team was staying in during the trip to Taos in northern New Mexico. The boy, crying, woke up another child and called his mother immediately after the assault, according to a statement of probable cause.
Other children told deputies with the Taos County Sheriff’s Office that Hedges had been staying in a lower area of the cabin with three children at the time of the incident. When the boy called his mother, Hedges began to pack up his own belongings, according to the statement of probable cause.
When deputies arrived, Hedges was walking away from the cabin toward a road, according to the probable cause statement.
Jordan said Monday that the family believes Hedges “groomed” the boy for some time before the assault, and said there were prior instances of inappropriate behavior that the boy didn’t fully understand before the assault, which was an escalation.
“The young boy knew something was seriously wrong, he was incredibly upset,” Jordan said.
Jordan believes there could be additional victims who have yet to come forward.
“We are obviously concerned more than anything that there are a lot more victims out there,” he said. “These types of things, in our experience, are not isolated.”
He urged any such people to contact local law enforcement.
The club reported the coach’s arrest to the U.S. Center for SafeSport and has made a professional therapist available to the club’s athletes, families and staff, Bechtel said in the Thursday statement. Coaches go through background checks before they are hired and every two years, and they complete mandatory SafeSport trainings, Bechtel said.
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