Editor’s note: The following story contains discussion of graphic sexual material.
A high school tennis coach in Pennsylvania has resigned after pornographic videos in which he smoked meth while having anal sex and referring to himself as a “meth whore” surfaced, confirming parental concerns about the transgender-identifying public school employee.
In one video, screenshots of which were reviewed by The Daily Wire, Gettysburg Area High School coach David Yates, who goes by the name Sasha, appears to be smoking meth, with the assistance of a woman, and asks, “Am I a good meth whore?” In another, Yates — a middle-aged British man — is seen bent over a counter wearing a black bra and having sex with a man wearing a ski mask.
Parents had long complained about Yates’ behavior, including the time he went into the girls’ locker room and asked students about their underwear preference and menstruation. He was disciplined, but his contract was renewed after activists packed a school board meeting and claimed Yates was being targeted due to transphobia.
Now, those critics have gone silent, according to Michelle Smyers, a Gettysburg Area School District board member who says she was pilloried as a bigot after voting not to renew his contract.
Smyers told The Daily Wire that she received an email with the two videos attached at 3 a.m. on September 29. The email from an address called “ThugLove” contained the message: “Thought you might find it interesting how your high school tennis coach spends her weekends.”
Also at 3 a.m., Smyers received a text from Yates’ number saying, “I have information about Sasha Yates that you need to know.” The next morning, the same number texted Smyers saying, “This is Sasha Yates… I know what the video shows and I’m prepared to step down as Head Coach for tennis at the end of the girls season, which will be this Thursday.”
The Daily Wire called the number and Yates answered, saying he declined to comment.
Yates was employed on a part-time basis as a tennis coach for both the boys’ and girls’ teams at Gettysburg Area High School. Concerns about Yates first emerged in 2022 after he allegedly went into the girls’ locker room while the girls’ soccer team — with which he was not involved — and asked girls about what kind of underwear they liked. One of the girls was the daughter of the school board president, and complained that she felt uncomfortable.
A letter from Gettysburg High School principal Jeremy Lusk was put in his file, noting “concerns” about Yates and stating that “it is imperative to maintain professional boundaries.” The memo said Yates acknowledged changing in the locker room, but said he did not recall asking girls about menstruation and underwear, according to PennLive.
Smyers said other board members privately agreed that Yates should not work in a school, but “they were all afraid.”
“Nobody wants to be called the names. I’ve been called a bigot, a Nazi, KKKaren,” Smyers said. “They call me a racist, I’m like ‘you haven’t seen my family photos, I have a black child,’” she said.
Yates’s contract was extended in 2023, this time under the name David.
Soon after, a father said his daughter was in the girls’ bathroom and found Yates there, striking up a conversation with her and making her uncomfortable.
In August 2023, when Yates’ contract renewal came before the board, it deadlocked with a 3-3 vote. Over the ensuing weeks, activists, children, and media outlets began pressuring the board, accusing it of transphobia and hate.
Tristan Smith, the captain of the boys’ tennis team, told the board, “blatant transphobia is the main motivation behind this motion.” Resident Jennifer Nauright likened board members who opposed renewing the contract to Nazis, saying, “First they came for the coaches and librarians, and I did not speak out because I was not a coach or librarian.” Sarah Zipp called for Smyers to be “removed from her position” for “spewing hate.” Smyers received profane emails, including one with graphic sexual insults.
Smyers asked for the board to review Yates’ personnel file before voting, but the school administration refused to provide it. America First Legal, a conservative group, stepped in to offer pro-bono legal services, writing in an August 16, 2023 letter obtained by The Daily Wire that caselaw dictates school board members are entitled to have the information they need to make informed decisions about personnel.
“Neither you nor any other representative of the School District gets to decide what information is available to Ms. Smyers,” America First Legal said.
The letter also said that Stock & Leader, a law firm that represents Pennsylvania school districts including Gettysburg, had pressured school board members to renew Yates’s contract by saying if they did not, they could be sued and held personally liable, which Smyers took as an inappropriate and unfounded threat.
After America First Legal’s intervention, a Stock & Leader attorney, Chris Harris, produced for the board a single written reprimand of Yates, and told them that other complaints had not generated any written documentation, Smyers said. Harris said he would conduct an investigation of Yates’ conduct.
On September 5, 2023, the board renewed Yates’s contract in a 6-2 vote, with School Board President Kenneth Hassinger telling PennLive, “We were able to go back and look and see if rumors and other stuff, if there was any factual basis behind it — and I think you saw the vote tonight would tell you that the majority of those rumors did not have a factual basis to them.”
It turned out, Smyers said, that Harris did not even speak to one of the girls who complained about Yates, raising questions about the thoroughness of his investigation. In June 2024, Harris was charged with possessing and disseminating child pornography.
But Yates remained on the payroll. According to Smyers, one of the girls who complained about Yates said he continued to approach her and other girls outside the scope of his position, entering the girls’ locker room while teams he did not coach were changing, purportedly to wish them good luck.
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Last month, Yates’ contract was renewed again. “All of these other board members privately would tell me, ‘Look, we agree with you but we own businesses in this town,’ or, ‘It didn’t happen to my daughter.’ Look, it happened to the people you swore an oath to protect when you won your election,” Smyers said.
Yates resigned on September 30, but the superintendent did not explain to the public why. The Gettysburg Times reported on October 1 that Yates was resigning due to health reasons, and the videos were first reported by Reduxx on October 9.
Superintendent Jason Perrin confirmed Yates’ resignation to The Daily Wire, but would not say what the district has done to probe whether Yates’ erratic behavior may have impacted students, saying that “the district does not comment on confidential matters related to personnel.”
Smyers, who resigned from the school board in protest of their inaction shortly before Yates resigned, says her critics have been silent since the resignation.
“Maybe they’re still sucking down the bones of that crow I had to feed them,” Smyers said. “They must feel like idiots, because that thing you told me doesn’t happen has happened again.”
