The two students are among five charged with moving a deer decoy onto a county road. A car swerved to avoid it, the resulting crash seriously injured the driver and his passenger. Hardin County Judge Gary McKinley sentenced the two students to 60 days juvenile detention after the end of football season - a decision he said he knew would be criticized. Family and friends of the victims left the courtroom in protest.
Principal Arch Rogers says the school will not punish the students further because neither it or the Ohio High School Athletic Association have policies against their actions.
"The thing that would be involved is, you would have to have something in place that says that," says Rogers. "And what I'm saying is, you don't have anything in place that says that."
The Kenton schools superintendent says school staff want to work with students. Doug Roberts says administrators agree with the judge's decision.
"He obviously thought those kids were better off involved in the programs and we do to," Roberts says. "We feel that we have a lot of good coaches that provide good role models for those kids and the sentence he gave them - depending on who you talk to - is either not strict enough or too strict. But again that was the judge's decision and we're going to support him 100 percent."
Calls to the Ohio High School Athletic Association were not returned and a relative of one of the victims declined to speak. The sentencing judge also placed the boys under house arrest, ordered them to pay fines and restitution, perform community service and write a 500-word essay.