Exclusive | Powerhouse LA high school football coach mired in controversy fires back at peeved parents: I will not apologize
The California high school football coach mired in controversy over potential recruiting violations said bluntly this week he has no intentions of apologizing for the way he’s running his program.Just after Westlake head coach Rick Clausen was called out by several of his own players’ parents in a scathing letter to the school, the 44-year-old told the California Post on Thursday he’s not fretting about the complaints one bit.“It’s comical, to be honest with you,” Clausen said.“But with what goes on in today’s society, nothing shocks me in any way, shape or form.”Clausen took over a floundering Westlake program in 2025 and immediately turned the team around, going 10-1 in his first year and 7-3 so far in Year Two.
That came on the heels of an 0-10 season the year before he took over coaching.However, last week, a group of parents sent a memo to Westlake High School stating they’ve enlisted the help of a private investigation company to probe into whether or not Clausen has committed recruiting violations in order to turn the school into a winner.The letter was five paragraphs long, and it stated it was authored by “Concerned Westlake High School Parents.”Clausen didn’t seem concerned about it at all during an interview with The Post, chalking everything up to “kind of the world, unfortunately, that we’re living in now.”“This is kind of what we have done historically with programs,” the football coach said.“We’ve inherited programs that have been down on their luck and we turn them around.
Not going to apologize for it.But it doesn’t fit everybody.”In a separate statement, Clausen, the Los Angeles Rams Don Shula Coach of the Year Award winner in 2025, added that “everything in our program is earned through competition.”“For some kids and families,” he said, “competition is a foreign concept and they feel they are ‘entitled’ to certain things.
That is the old Westlake and that does not fit with the direction...