Coupeville Sports

South Whidbey School Board President Brook Willeford may be a prolific tweeter with a pronounced distaste for a religiously orientated private school athletic rival.

If so, it’s not under his own name, however.

Though he briefly had his own profile on the platform now known as X (sending out 29 messages in the first four months of 2017), Willeford appears to currently communicate with his 247 followers under the name “Jerry Senderson.”

 

 

“Jerry Senderson” is the name of a character used in sketches by a comedy/sports group known as Dude Perfect, who hail from Frisco, Texas.

https://dudeperfect.fandom.com/wiki/Jerry_Senderson

The “Senderson” account has issued 6,403 posts since first appearing on Twitter/X in November 2021.

None have mentioned Willeford by name or attempted to paint him or other South Whidbey school board members in a negative light.

This makes it seem unlikely the account is set up by someone looking to harm the board president, who ran unopposed for another term in the Nov. 7 general election.

Instead, most of the “Senderson” tweets — messages to the world from someone afraid to reveal their real identity — revolve around national politics.

Tweet after tweet lines up almost precisely with views expressed publicly by Willeford.

A recent string of tweets, however, concern the school district whose board he leads.

A board which was honored by the Washington State School Directors’ Association as one of its 2023 School Board of Distinction winners.

That award was created to “celebrate school boards across the state that have demonstrated exceptional leadership.”

South Whidbey was passed over in favor of La Conner when WSSDA selected its “boards of the year” at the yearly conference last weekend.

The “Senderson” tweets include several critical of King’s High School, a South Whidbey rival in the Emerald Sound League.

They came on the heels of several people attempting to picket the 1A District 2 Cross Country Championships when they were held at SWHS Oct. 29.

Aspen Hoffman, a transgender student from Seattle Academy, finished 3rd in the girls race that day, helping lift the private school squad to a team title, narrowly nipping King’s.

Hoffman qualified for the state meet and finished 18th in Pasco.

The “Senderson” account featured a photo of Willeford from the day of the attempted protest but was changed to the current pic of George Carlin after a back-and-forth between “Senderson” and other Twitter users, who were then blocked.

While the “Senderson” tweets allege King’s was involved in the attempted protest, no public evidence has been shown to back this up.

King’s officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Willeford, for his part, denies he runs the “Senderson” Twitter/X account.

“I can tell you that the information you’ve received is false,” Willeford said in an email.

“I do not have an active Twitter/X account either under my own name or an assumed name.

“I used Twitter/X for a brief time several years ago for my family business but am no longer active there.

“I do not run that account, nor do I know who runs that account. The claim that this is my account is false.”

That family business is the antiquated one-screen Clyde Theater in Langley, where Brook Willeford, otherwise a stay-at-home father, is co-manager with his father.

While Brook Willeford used email to respond, a person in his inner circle reached out to me by phone the same afternoon.

That conversation began with the caller dismissively telling me I was incorrect in identifying Willeford as the president of the South Whidbey School Board and “needed to do my research.”

So, I did, and that is exactly how the district’s own website refers to him.

After lecturing me with a guilt trip that any story on Willeford would cause damage to those around him, the caller doubled down on the assertation that the “Senderson” account wasn’t his.

This stance appears to be directly contradicted by “Senderson’s” own tweets.

Contrary to that tweet, a public records request reveals no one contacted the Island County Sheriff’s Department Oct. 22 to discuss the upcoming meet.

The next day, however, a phone call was received from a number which belongs to South Whidbey High School.

The Sheriff’s Department met with SWHS Principal/Athletic Director Paul Lagerstedt Oct. 23, and the school requested a police presence for the meet.

When contacted by email and asked if Willeford had spoken to Lagerstedt about the planned protest prior to the school contacting the sheriff’s office, the email was answered instead by South Whidbey Superintendent Dr. Josephine Moccia, who had been cc’d.

Her response?

“I believe you saw that Brook responded to you directly and that you are totally mistaken,” Dr. Moccia wrote.

At the time of the potential protest, Willeford was lurking at the entrance to the cross country meet, standing slightly behind law enforcement.

In 30+ years as a prep sportswriter, it has been my observation that athletic directors, principals, and school athletic personnel, not school board members, typically handle security, ticket sales, or fan interactions.

This was backed up by officials at several other school districts, with the prevailing opinion being that “there would be zero reason a school board member for us would be in that role.”

No one at South Whidbey responded to a follow-up email, asking for Lagerstedt to be allowed to answer two questions.

These are whether he spoke to Willeford prior to contact with the sheriff’s department, or whether the school board director was involved in the meet in an official capacity.

Willeford, a 1998 South Whidbey grad, is seen sporting his high school lettermen jacket in the photo.

He ran for the Falcon cross country team, finishing 141st out of 148 runners at the state meet in Pasco as a senior.

The “Senderson” account has displayed a similar love for the sport, retweeting links to cross country stories, including one which ran here on Coupeville Sports, as well as “liking” others.

The “Senderson” account, which has averaged nearly nine tweets a day over the course of the past two years, went dead silent in the hours after the first emails were sent to Dr. Moccia and Willeford’s fellow school board members.

The crack-like lure of Twitter/X seemed to be too much, though.

While not tweeting, “Senderson” did continue to mash the buttons on their phone, providing 34 “likes” in less than 24 hours.

This continues a trend in which the account has “liked” an astonishing 30,600+ tweets in two years.

That breaks down to almost 42 “likes” per day on average.

By comparison, the Coupeville Sports Twitter/X account, which was relaunched in Oct. 2020 — a full 13 months before “Senderson” joined the site — has handed out just 83 “likes” total.

Many of those center around photos of babies related to former Coupeville athletes and various sports reporters and rankings wizards.

A considerable chunk of the tsunami of “likes” delivered by “Senderson” center around attacks on conservative politicians such as State Rep. Jim Walsh, who lives in Aberdeen and has been a frequent sparring partner of the “Senderson” account.

Buried in a recent string of “likes” for political posts, however, was also one for Jonathan Pulley announcing he had applied for entrance to the University of Washington.

Pulley is a young Whidbey Island man who has built a considerable following writing about weather on Facebook.

He also states in his Twitter/X bio that he is “a follower of Jesus Christ.”

That part of the bio may have slipped past “Senderson,” as their account retweets and “likes” anti-Christian messages and memes at a staggering rate.

The “Senderson” Twitter/X account went into a second round of black-out silence right after the email to Lagerstedt which was co-opted by Moccia.

Once again, tweets — which are publicly visible — stopped, while “likes” — which have to be actively searched out on an account — continued at a thumb-shredding rate.

The South Whidbey School District has a policy (#4309) concerning social media use, but it is primarily focused on official accounts.

https://go.boarddocs.com/wa/swsd/Board.nsf/vpublic?open#

Policy #4309 states “We do not allow comments that are abusive, hateful or intended to defame anyone or any organization.”

Dr. Moccia was asked to comment on whether the tweets made by the “Senderson” Twitter/X account, if run by a school board director, would violate this policy.

She did not respond, nor did any South Whidbey board member other than Willeford, despite the fact many of the tweets appear to run counter to the district’s stated mission for how it wants its students to be educated.

South Whidbey’s next-door neighbors did answer a request for comment.

While not specifically speaking to issues raised by the existence of the “Senderson” account, the Coupeville School Board issued a statement regarding its own work on instituting policies to govern social media use by directors.

“We currently do not have a policy that specifically addresses board members’ use of social media,” said Board President Christie Sears.

“However, such a policy has been discussed.

“Our board has recently established a committee, “Protocols and Policy”, with a purpose to create and propose board protocols, including protocols regarding communication,” Sears added.

“To study current and potential new policies; and to present protocol and policy information and recommendations to the full board.”

The committee began this work during their 2023 board retreat.

Coupeville’s current policy regarding social media use can be found at:

https://go.boarddocs.com/wa/coupeville/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=BZVR4E6AFC47#

No Coupeville School Board members, nor any from Oak Harbor, appear to currently have “burner” accounts on Twitter/X.

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