The End of the Enabled Edge Twins: How We Failed, and Where We Go From Here

I was about to hang up the phone.

The coach on the other end had been exasperatedly describing the "inappropriate" online behavior of Jeff and Zach Edgington, the freelance reporters the Arizona high school sports scene had come to know as the "Edge Twins," when I advised him to take his concerns to the Arizona Interscholastic Association. The coach's primary concern, a concern I'd not only heard before, but one I also shared, as well as attempted to address with persons affiliated with the AIA, as well as the 31-year-old twin reporters themselves, was that they would frequently 'favorite' pictures of high school girls on Twitter. The pictures the Edge Twins favorited were often photos of girls getting ready to head to a school dance, or wearing swimsuits. Some of the girls were prep athletes that the twins had been tasked with covering, while some were only loosely affiliated with those athletes, being athletic trainers or cheerleaders. Sometimes the high school girls were simply students that had no affiliation with high school athletics at all.

As far as I was concerned, addressing the matter with the AIA was the only way to go. The Edgingtons were both credential-carrying members of local the prep sports media. Despite only one twin, Jeff, receiving semi-regular freelance assignments from several local media entities, both brothers regularly showed up to as many as four-to-five high school athletic events per week. If anyone could influence the behavior of the Edge Twins, it certainly wasn't me, so I advised the coach to take it up with the organization that could potentially threaten a loss of access to the prep sports events the twins seemed to care a great deal for. Plus, if he agreed to go to the AIA, even if he didn't actually follow through with it, that would be one less ugly and complicated situation for me to try and deal with.

I was about to hang up the phone- but that's when the coach said, "I don't know what more we can do. We've already banned them from campus."

That phone call took place on the evening of Friday, April 27th. By Sunday night, the idea that either Jeff or Zach Edgington had been sending inappropriate Snapchat messages to one of the school's athletes, and that those messages could have been bad enough to warrant both a banishment from the campus, as well as the local police being contacted, had completely consumed my thinking. I hadn't seen the messages in question, but I assumed that if this second-hand account were true, there had to be more than one occurrence of the Edge Twins crossing the line.

As I write this reflection two weeks after the initial phone call, those occurrences seem to have no end.

The local prep sports reporting scene, for the most part, is a tight-knit community. Despite that, I wasn't close with either Edgington brother, and in turn, I didn't know much about their origin or ongoing motivation to exist and make a name for themselves in the world of high school sports coverage. As far as I was concerned, the brothers were untrained, unprofessional, uncouth, and often a liability to whomever attempted to show them kindness and/or take advantage of their endless availability to function as stringers.

On more than one occasion, myself and others personally had to address issues with the Edge Twins that, at the time, I assumed stemmed from a lack of preparation and proper training in Journalism. At the 2017 Chandler vs IMG Academy varsity football game, they had to be reminded that openly cheering for Chandler High while standing next to IMG's coaches wasn't a good idea. Toward the end of 2017, amid several complaints that the Edge Twins had been attending high school games while intoxicated, one local editor severed ties with them.

Complaints that one or both had been intoxicated during the 2017 3A State Championship game at Campo Verde High School were so abundant, that despite not witnessing it myself, I approached employees of AZPreps365.com about the best method for confronting them, and then months later decided to publicly tell the Edge Twins on social media that they needed to stop drinking before games if they hoped to continue functioning as reporters. In response, Zach Edgington admitted to drinking before the 3A championship, and asked me to remove my post from social media. I replied by outlining several complaints I had overheard others express, including the favoriting of high school girls' Tweets. I told them those behaviors had to cease immediately.

That interaction was in February of 2018. Two months later, I found myself staying up most of the night searching through years of each brother's Twitter history to see if I could find anything resembling the supposed inappropriate Snapchat messages that resulted in a campus-wide ban.

By Monday morning (April 30), I had found what seemed to be a well circulated Tweet dated September 2016 that included screenshots of Zach Edgington attempting to convince a young woman, on her 18th birthday, to send him illicit photos in exchange for Ke$ha tickets. Although it's clear from the woman's string of tweets that this direct message exchange with Zach Edgington took place on the date of her 18th birthday, Zach seemed unaware of her age, asking her twice how old she was while attempting to secure "sexy" pictures, and assuring her he'd keep the photos "Between us." When the girl replied that she was in a wheelchair, Zach responded by asking her for a photo of her chest, writing "That could work lol."

The young woman made the exchange public, and despite the post being retweeted nearly 200 times by the time I stumbled across it, there hadn't been any repercussions.

This exchange between Zach Edgington and the young woman who made it public should have been enough to at least disqualify him from spending his days on high school sidelines, but before taking any next step I wanted to make sure that this type of behavior wasn't being unfairly attributed to Jeff in the event that Zach was the only one engaging in inappropriate interactions. I alerted several people to the tweet in hopes that if anyone had any information about the exchange that got the brothers banned from a high school campus, that they would come forward. News traveled fast, and within 30 minutes, the affected athlete reposted the Snapchat conversation on social media himself. It was a male student from Notre Dame Prep, and the messages he received came from a Snapchat account that seemed to be run by Jeff Edgington, who was pretending to be a high school girl from Chaparral. In the messages, Jeff bets the athlete that Chaparral will keep the upcoming September 2017 football game versus Notre Dame close, and asked that the loser of the bet "Streaks through their house," and does the "Ice bucket challenge in just briefs in their shower."

Jeff added, "Keep it between us."

When the Notre Dame student-athlete didn't respond favorably, the messages became more aggressive.

"I just want you to streak or do push ups naked on snap... Do it p-ssy."

Later, both 12 News and AZCentral.com would report that Notre Dame Prep contacted the local Roman Catholic Diocese and the Scottsdale Police.

The brothers were banned from the Notre Dame Prep campus, but no one at the Arizona Interscholastic Association would be informed of the transgression, and in turn, no other school or media outlet learned that Jeff Edgington had inappropriate contact with a student-athlete. They weren't allowed around one school's kids (although they covered Notre Dame Prep football from the sideline of the 2017 5A state championship game), but because of the lack of communication between schools, they were free to spend time around other school's kids.

Once I had evidence that both Edgington brothers had made inappropriate contact with students, I reached out to Sports360AZ.com's Jason Jewell, as well as fellow ArizonaVarsity.com staff member, Chilly, to share the messages.

Jason Jewell advised that he was going to contact the AIA with the information immediately. Chilly advised that it was time to make the information public so that parents and coaches could be aware of the Edge Twins' behavior. As Jason Jewell crafted an email to the AIA, I sent out a tweet tagging both brothers, which read-

"Done with @EdgeTwin02 (Jeff) and @EdgeZach (Zach). Tried to give you a chance. Tried to give you advice. Tried to keep you from getting yourselves in trouble. But y’all are cancelled. Kids first. Safety first."

Within three hours of sending that tweet, the AIA responded to Jason Jewell's email by reaching out to its organization's affiliated athletic directors with an email that stated-

"Jeff and Zach Edginton (sp) of Scorestream will no longer be allowed access to any AIA events. It is required that you do not accept their credentials at your check-in gates, and should not let them in as spectators."

The AIA did not have the ability to contact the brothers to let them know of their ban directly, because the AIA credentialing system previously allowed for supervisors to acquire credentials on behalf of any of its employees- without even having possession of contact information for their own temporary or full-time staff. Despite ScoreStream's listed supervisor for Jeff and Zach Edgington being based out of California, and despite ScoreStream having no formal employer/employee relationship with the Edge Twins (ScoreStream's own website states "...all the scores, photos and videos come from real fans in the stands"), somehow an entity that was not producing traditional media content was able to secure credentials for "fans" to have direct access to student-athletes.

In response to the scandal, ScoreStream CEO Derrick Oien told 12 News that Jeff and Zach Edgington “essentially scammed us into getting the credentials.”

In addition, ScoreStream, and Oien himself, reached out to me via Twitter to say that the Edge Twins "did not post photos or scores to ScoreStream until the last few weeks," as well as "Anyone can post to Twitter using our app. We are a tool not a media outlet."

Despite the claim that the Edge Twins did not post scores until recently, a Twitter history of ScoreStream promoting Jeff Edgington's participation on their application dates back to August 2014, and despite not being a "media outlet," Jeff was writing blog posts for the site as early as October 2015, and as recently as April 30th of this year, both Edgington brothers had been credentialed as a media member by the AIA via the non-media outlet, ScoreStream.

Once I had publicly admonished the Edge Twins for their online behavior, I began to receive testimonies from student-athletes and parents, past and present, attesting to online experiences similar to the ones described in the initially revealed tweets.

The first came from a 17-year old male athlete at a high school in Gilbert, stating that he had been dared by Jeff Edgington to run around his house naked, via a direct a message that came through in the middle of the night. Soon after, I received a message from a recently graduated Peoria-area male who claimed to have received a message from Jeff Edgington in which he requested that the student-athlete run around his house naked.

Once I posted screenshots of those two messages, concealing the identities of the students involved, the claims of similar behavior began to flood both my personal, and Arizona Varsity Twitter direct message inbox.

There were claims of offers to throw a party for a group of west valley high school cheerleaders, as well as screenshots of text messages sent to one Mesa-area senior student-athlete; in which Zach Edgington requests photos of her in a bikini and bra, and offers to send her photos of himself in exchange. Zach's contact with the Mesa-area senior began in late February of 2018. The girl involved in the exchanges told me "I just feel so embarrassed that I let this happen."

A current Phoenix private school student-athlete claimed to have received pictures of Jeff Edgington's feet while Jeff was showering, as well as dares for him to run around his house naked. An east-Mesa football player shared screenshots of a similar request from Jeff (for him to "streak" in his house) that were dated in August 2017, well before he turned 18.

A Mesa-area athletic trainer claimed she received messages from one of the brothers asking for a video of her doing shirtless sit-ups. Male football players from Scottsdale and Buckeye schools reached out about receiving inappropriate contact and conduct. Female volleyball players from Phoenix and Gilbert schools made the same claim.

The claims of harassment or inappropriate conduct weren't limited to high school students. Multiple Arizona State University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication students reached out to me and shared stories as well. One instance included a reporter receiving repeated suggestive social media overtures from both brothers around the same time period, while another reporter disclosed that her contact with Zach Edgington escalated to him seeking out her place of employment, and spending extended periods of time at the establishment without making any purchases.

By the time I had made many of the examples I had received of the Edgington's inappropriate behavior public on Twitter, both 12 News and The Washington Post had reached out to speak about what had happened. Adam Bagni's investigative report, which included interviews with some of the athletes I'd previously referenced, as well as a statement from Zach Edgington that he's “never inappropriately talked to anybody under 18,” aired at 10pm on Tuesday, May 1st. The partially aggregated Washington Post article came out the morning of Wednesday, May 2nd. On the evening of Thursday, May 3rd, AZCentral published an article that included a claim from Jeff Edgington that "We’ve never done anything to anyone under 18."

Once all three of those articles had been published and were being shared, the stories about the twins' misbehavior that was being sent my way began to skew much earlier than the 2015-through-2018 window of complaints I had previously been receiving.

A former Boulder Creek student who has long since graduated college showed me a public Facebook post dating back to April 2012 in which she advised all of her friends to change the name of the number she had been receiving messages from to "CREEEPER." The sender of the messages was pretending to be a well known athlete that was still in high school, and using that athlete's status to request illicit photos from this girl, who had already graduated high school and was attending Arizona State. Some of the people that responded to her post recognized the number. Others recognized the behavior. It was Zach Edgington, who along with his brother, had garnered a reputation with several Boulder Creek graduating classes in a row (with claims of knowledge of this behavior going all the way back to 2008), as guys who wouldn't hesitate to hit on high school girls. Many of the girls responded by simply ignoring or blocking the Edge Twins, but I spoke to more than one former Boulder Creek student who claimed they took messages like this directly to the faculty at Boulder Creek, and that "they never really acted on it." One speculated that the reason for a lack of action is that Jeff and Zach's mother, Suzi Edgington, was on staff at Boulder Creek. Another claimed that their complaint was forwarded by a faculty member directly to the Edgington family to handle in-house.

Screenshots of various conversations the Edge Twins had with former Boulder Creek students date as far back as May 2011, in which Jeff Edgington sends over 200 Facebook messages in an attempt to engage what he called his "fav 2013er," a reference to her graduating class. Despite the fact that she's finishing up as a sophomore in high school, and that he's in his mid-20's, he proceeds to ask for and comment on swimsuit pictures, and at the end of nearly a month and a half of being ignored, writes in response to her comment that she's getting off(line), "oh i can get u off." Shortly after, he was blocked. She was 16 at the time.

Boulder Creek and Notre Dame Prep don't stand alone as the only schools accused of having some level of knowledge of the Edge Twins' activities without informing all of the necessary parties that could have put an earlier stop to the behavior.

There are claims that Jeff and Zach Edgington were banned in part from covering or maintaining a presence around Chaparral girls soccer, as well as complaints about their presence around Chaparral football. Current and former employees of both Brophy and Barry Goldwater made claims to me that the Edge Twins were at one time or another considered unwelcome around some of their athletes. Multiple students at Northwest Christian have expressed that there had been a concentrated student-led effort to let the Edge Twins know they were no longer welcome covering certain sports. Parents at multiple Scottsdale and Paradise Valley schools reached out to discuss knowledge of the Edge Twins' favoriting of high school girls' photographs, and that they had at the very least, expressed concern to their student athlete, or other parents about that particular practice.

I do not reference these occurrences as a means of damnation for those who felt as though they took an appropriate amount of action. I personally brushed off the initial concerns that my staff-member, Chilly, expressed to me in late August of 2017, when he told me that the Edge Twins approached him about wanting to take a photo of a Valley Vista female student athlete, and told him that they believed this student would let Chilly "put his arm around her" in the photo. I encouraged Chilly not to spend time around them, and advised I'd keep distance as well. That was it, and it wasn't enough.

Many who though they were going to the right person to help handle a tough situation and keep kids safe from predation quickly found out that "the right person" wasn't able to properly handle their concerns.

One such person is a 17-year-old Ohio resident and cousin of the Edgingtons who spent most of summer 2017 in Arizona visiting family. For the purposes of this disclosure, we'll call her "Merida." When the then-16-year-old Merida returned to Ohio, she began to receive illicit sexual messages from Zach Edginton. She quickly reminded him of their age difference.

"...i'm 16 years old," she wrote, via Snapchat.

"i know," replied Zach.

"16 and you're almost 31 doesn't that feel wrong to you," she wrote.

Merida, caught off guard by her own family member's advances, went along with the conversation, never returning Zach's misplaced perverse affections, but also not going out of her way to chastise him. Once they finished their Snapchat conversation, Merida blocked Zach on all social media platforms, and did what she thought was best- called Zach's mother. However, it was because she didn't end the Snapchat conversation sooner that Merida says Suzi Edgington, who worked at Boulder Creek High School 6-7 years' prior when previous complaints had been registered about her adult sons' contact with underage students, blamed her for the interaction.

"We got in a huge fight about who was in the wrong, why this happened, and why I didn't stop texting him right away," Merida said. "In my head I just thought that this was family, and even though he was doing what he was doing, I wanted to be there for my family. The things he was saying are how some guys talk to girls online. I'm used to seeing stuff like that from guys my age, but not from a 30-year-old-man. It wasn't the content that was shocking. It was the person."

Merida said that her mother had been through something similar, so she knew that she had someone to talk to about the right way to move forward. She went to Columbus Police and filed a complaint about the messages, and after hearing nothing for three months, went back and tried to push the case forward with the Prosecutors office in November of 2017. Again "nothing happened."

Merida's mother recently passed away, and another family member who was visiting for the funeral shared the Washington Post article with her. She said the article helped her feel vindicated and relieved after nine months of feeling like her going public had disrupted her family.

"I felt like everyone in the family was turning against me, and it broke my heart. I deeply love my family that lives out in Arizona, and it broke me," Merida said, "It had been stored in the back of my mind and I thought about it constantly. I definitely felt relieved finding out that I'm not alone. It feels like a huge weight has lifted."

Going back at least seven years, there is documented evidence of both Jeff and Zach Edgington soliciting illicit photos and messages from underage boys and girls. Multiple people have confided in me through first-hand knowledge that the Edgington family has long been well-aware of Jeff and Zach's penchant for predatory behavior.

The Edge Twins' sinister appetites span across gender, sport, age, and as Merida explained, even family boundaries.

At least twice, a school or person has filed a direct complaint with the police in relation to lewd messages. On at least half a dozen occasions, the Edge Twins were banned rom covering specific teams or setting foot on certain campuses.

We have plenty of record at this point of what those men have done wrong, and all of the ways the high school sports community failed to recognize and vanquish those deeds. So now the question we're forced to answer is "How do we make sure this never happens again?"

We might not be able to keep every single kid participating in youth sports safe from every kind of danger, but who are we if we're not at least trying to make the changes that are within our grasp? I've spent two weeks thinking about where our blind spots may have been in this instance, and these are the conversation-starting suggestions I've come up with.

Don't be embarrassed. Don't be ashamed. The tree that many other people said it was safe to pick and eat from contained poisoned fruit. You were supposed to be protected from that, and a lot of people failed you along the way.

The Edge Twins, for their schemes and cruel intent, owe you an apology.

Some of your coaches and parents, for overvaluing media validation and undervaluing your safety, owe you an apology.

Some of your administrators, for a lack of discernment and a failure to communicate, owe you an apology.

Some of the media, myself included, for missed opportunities to protect the healthy environment we'd hoped to establish (by letting impostors look and act like us), owe you an apology.

The AIA, for credentialing practices that created opportunities for bad actors, owes you an apology.

The best way for us to apologize is to take a cue from you. We have to practice. We have to prepare. We have to learn and grow.

Meanwhile, make sure that you've got people that you can talk to- preferably more than one person. Choose people you trust to do the right thing in the face of adversity, and who don't make you feel like your concerns are a burden. You never know when you're going to need them to speak wisdom into your situation.

To the parents: We can't gamble the safety and security of our children for the sake of publicity. I've tweeted this on several occasions before, but it's worth repeating: We tell our kids not to take candy from strangers, but if the candy is media attention, we'll often pick the kid up and put them in the van ourselves.

Get to know your local sports media members (and support the good ones!). Don't harass them, but make sure that if they feel they have the authority to write about, or film your children, that you've taken the time to establish your presence somewhere in that scenario. It's your right! Could that make things more annoying for me? Sure, but my annoyance is certainly worth the piece of mind you might be able to establish by getting to know what I and my colleagues are all about. Plus, it never hurts for us to see each other as human beings and not a means to whatever end we're hoping to accomplish.

And talk to your kids! They're going to keep certain things from you for the simple fact that trying to get you to understand the framework of the problem is much more difficult than just outlining the root of that problem. Not sure how to start the conversation? Start small. Instead of "Hi son/daughter, has anyone ever privately messaged you in a way that made you feel uncomfortable because I'll kill them if they did," start with a simple, open-ended question that can help establish ground rules in the event that this is an issue that they have faced, or will face. Try "do you know who you'd talk to if an adult sends you a message online that made you feel uncomfortable?" Seek to find out if your kids are prepared for this sort of thing, and in doing so, you'll be considering and building your own level of preparedness. Battles are won in preparation.

The social media realm is part of the game now. If you refuse to acknowledge or take ownership of that fact, you're putting the blindfold on yourself. The kids need leadership in this area. Athletes need proper social media behavior modeled for them, because it's just like any other area of life. You teach your players how to take a correct pursuit angle, or how to execute a defensive switch on a pick and roll, by showing them. You don't teach them anything by turning your back. If it's too intimidating a process to police teenagers on the internet, find a volunteer or two who will, and make sure you talk with that person every single day. But even then- you need to be where the kids are. Create a Twitter. And an Instagram. And a Snapchat. Even if you rarely log on, let those accounts function like a scarecrow until you're more acclimated to the various social media environments. Use social media as a tool. Don't let it use you.

The fact of the matter is that if more of you had seen the things the Edge Twins were favoriting online, the more of you would have potentially stumbled into conversations that spurred action toward positive change much sooner than two weeks ago.

Your job is already hard enough- you're the one that needs to be the connective tissue between coaches, parents, governing bodies, referees, visiting teams and even the sanitation crew.

Oh, and the media.

You need to make sure that you have a solid understanding of the media. Here's the deal- the Arizona Interscholastic Association is saying that whatever happens during the regular season is on you. Someone might show up to your school with a media credential, but you don't need to accept it... and if you do, you might want to know who those people are, why they showed up, where their content lands, and whether the kids you're serving are safe with them around.

Right now, the AIA refuses to credential several local members from what kids consider to be the Arizona prep sports media-sphere. Here's the thing about saying no to what the kids want- you can't vet what you reject. You can't have standards like "no registered sex offenders filming my students" when you, as the person who is in charge of the regular season, don't have a mechanism by which you can vet people that the AIA already refused to vet.

It's time for the Arizona Athletic Directors and the AIA to communicate continuously until they can define how schools ensure the right people have access to our children.

You're a governing body. So govern. And do it with some conviction.

Understand that the media landscape has shifted dramatically. Most outfits are making highlight tapes now, or Instagram Stories, or some other form of innovative and in-the-moment modality of multimedia content. It's time to expand beyond the idea that there's one big newspaper functioning as your morning star, with a bunch of little fragmented media planets orbiting around it. AZCentral used to have an entire high school staff, and now it's essentially more of a paysite than my actual paysite, fueled primarily by one guy who often has to sneak an uncredentialed helper onto the sideline to keep stats for him.

It's time for the AIA to either crack down on everyone and hold the schools accountable to regular season standards that are going to help keep the children who play the sports (the same kids that ensure we all have jobs to show up to) out of harms way, or it's time to open the tent up a little bit wider so we can get everyone in and have them agree on a level of self-accountability and communication that allows the community to police itself. Had any number of us been included in any kind of roundtable, we could have explained that ScoreStream isn't really media, or that anyone who takes up room on a sideline and isn't there to produce content shouldn't have a badge. We also could have agreed on a policy by which we are ultimately required to vet our own staff and provide proof that they're worthy of wearing your organization's name around their neck while out at schools.

At the end of the day, the AIA is already on the path to healthier means of communication when it comes to media matters, but there still needs to be that same level of effort when it comes to providing a means of communication for any grievance a coach or school might have with one of us, or vice versa. Something as simple as an end of fall/winter/spring season Coaching/AD media satisfaction survey at any point in 2016 or 2017 might have saved a whole lot of kids from a bunch of unnecessary harm.

We've got unprecedented access to these kids. Some of us have deadlines, some don't. I have the luxury of posting whatever content I want, whenever I want to post it, so I won't presume to speak for everyone when I say this- but maybe it couldn't hurt to get a coach's permission before sticking a camera, recorder or notebook in a young kid's face.

Maybe before sending a player a direct message, that first message goes to a coach, AD or parent.

Should we have to take extra steps just because a pair of predatory and sad 31-year old brothers tried to hide amongst us and harm the kids we cover?

Yeah. We should.

And not as penance, but out of a sense of awe that the Edge Twins were able to get away with what they were doing for so long, for the simple fact that being around us, and acting similar to us, gave them, and the kids they were talking to, a false sense of legitimacy. Whatever we do, we can't break our necks backpedaling away from culpability like ScoreStream.

If the kids thought that anything Jeff or Zach Edgington was doing was normal, then it's time for the lot of us to become very abnormal.

Also, lean into this unique community of like-minded competitors and don't be afraid to speak up. Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you. I missed several signs and opportunities to pursue the right course of action when it came to the Edgingtons. I'm only doing it now because I was surrounded by the right people at the right time.

Remember, I was about to hang up the phone.