Object of softball coach’s affection on why she turned the high school coach in

Katherine Aagard thought she was helping out some teenage girls with a scavenger hunt. So not thinking much of it at the time, she agreed to give them her phone number and let them take her photo.

“They were in their running clothes,” Aagard told KIRO Radio’s Luke Burbank and Tom Tangney. She said that at the time she was thinking about how much she enjoyed scavenger hunts – she didn’t want to leave the girls in a lurch.

But then, she started getting texts, and started texting with the high school girls’ softball coach.

It started out innocent enough – it wasn’t inappropriate or sexual, but in the words of Luke, it was kind of douchey.

Troy Hennum, 25, had only been a coach at Roosevelt High for a few days before sending out the team on their “scavenger hunt.”

Last year, when he was coaching at Lake Washington High School he was disciplined for sending texts to a player.

When Aagard eventually asked Hennum for a picture of him, so she could see who she was talking to, she said things got a little fishy. She said he put it off for a while, but when he eventually did send her the photo he asked her to reassure her that he was cute.

He also repeatedly asked Aagard, 21, how old she was. “It was a big red flag”

She said she was beginning to see the situation more clearly. After consulting with a friend she referred to as her “mentor” Aagard said she wrote out a list of pros and cons. “It was all cons.”

She said the list helped her evaluate his character based on things he had said. She was worried that, “that type of person was being entrusted with people that are minors. That was the tipping point.”

Aagard opened up a dialogue with the Roosevelt High School principal over email.

After being on the job for only six days, Hennum was suspended.

Aagard said that she’s surprised by the publicity the story has received over the past few days. “I’m just an average city girl.”