His detractors say he screamed, broke clipboards and called the girls on his basketball team "fa**ots." But what transformed Daniel Hussong from a controversial high school coach into a legal precedent was his suggesting to a player, in a 1995 meeting at Windsor-Plainsboro High in Princeton Junction, NJ, that she lose weight. Jennifer Besler, who was then 5'8" and 165 pounds, says the advice led to her developing an eating disorder and that she eventually lost so much muscle mass that she had to quit the soccer team at Richmond. Last week a jury awarded Besler, 25, $1.47 million in damages. (Her father, Philip, received $100,000 because he had been gaveled into silence at a 1997 school board meeting at which he had tried to complain.) Besler, a health-care consultant, says her case is about the power that coaches have over kids. "If he had told me to lose 10 pounds to look better in my prom dress, it would have been one thing. But he said it would make me faster, a better player. And that's what I wanted." Hussong, who no longer coaches at the school, is considering an appeal.
