CAMDEN — The Bearden High School football player whose hit on Parkers Chapel quarterback Caleb Jacobs led to Bearden forfeiting to PC last Friday night recorded a video apology and posted it to the El Dorado News-Times Facebook page.
Kendrick Juniel recorded the video in the Bearden gym.
“I do want to apologize to the quarterback for the mistake I made,” he said in the video. “I regret my action, and I will take my punishment. I won’t blame the refs for anything that happened that night. I was wrong, and I’m very, very sorry. I know a lot of fans will still hate me, but God knows my heart, and that’s all that matters. Go Bears.”
Caleb Jacobs responded to the video on the News-Times’ Facebook page, writing “Thank you for the apology, good luck the rest of the season."
Bearden coach Greg Anthony said he was in church when he saw Juniel’s video.
“Kendrick did that by himself,” Anthony said. “That’s the type of kid he is. I talked to his dad about it, and he knows he made a mistake. He just got caught up in the game. He saw something about the comments that were being made on Facebook about him being a bad person, and he just felt like he needed to issue an apology to Caleb. That’s between him and Caleb. The adults need to stay out of it. The adults make it worse than what it is.”
Parkers Chapel coach Elliot Jacobs, who is Caleb’s father, called the hit an “unfortunate event.”
“I think the emotions got the best of the kids. He’s a good kid,” Elliot said. “We’ve had the privilege of playing against him the last two years. I know that he apologized and we humbly accepted. We know that he’s going to learn from this. He’s a great player, a great athlete and an even better person. We all make mistakes, and when we make them, we’ve got to learn from them. I guarantee you that kid will do it.”
Parkers Chapel was up 38-6 when Juniel ran directly at Caleb Jacobs, who was serving as the holder on a PAT attempt, and lowered his shoulder into him. The Trojan quarterback had scored four touchdowns in the game.
Anthony said Juniel won’t play in this Friday’s football game for Bearden and added that he forfeited the game because a lack of control by the referees.
“I pulled the team off of the field because of a safety issue, because I’m sure their team, there’s no doubt in my mind was going to take a cheap shot; they had already taken some and that’s fine,” he said. “They weren’t called and we’ll live with it.
“But Kendrick is the type of person that he regrets what he did. He had to meet with the superintendent, myself and the principal and his parents. Kendrick has gone through it. He’s gone through more than what the people mouthing on [the News-Times] website would go through if they screwed up. But it’s over with, it’s done and we’re going to leave it there.”
(Jason Avery contributed to this story.)