A former Webberville volunteer assistant basketball coach was convicted Monday of accosting a teenage girl.
He was acquitted of another sexual assault charge involving a different teenage girl.
Tennant will have to register as a sex offender, and faces up to four years in prison when he's sentenced.
Tennant was not on staff at the time he inappropriately touched a 15 year old girl. His wife, Kristina Tennant, is still the head coach. She offered to resign from her position, but the school district rejected her offer.
Charges were filed against Kenneth Thomas Tennant, age 47, in April 2018. He was accused of raping a teenage girl. According to court documents, the Perry resident was originally charged with one count of criminal sexual conduct and one count of accosting a child for immoral purposes. The allegations go back 10 years.
On May 18 his wife took the stand. Kristina Tennant told the court she was in disbelief when the two accusers told her their stories, back in October 2016. Both of the girls who alleged sexual misconduct played for her on the Webberville High School basketball team. Mrs. Tennant testified that a second accuser told her Tennant touched her inappropriately and said things that made her uncomfortable.
Mrs. Tennant talked with her husband the next morning. "I was sick to my stomach. He sat there and I said what happened," Mrs. Tennant explained the conversation with her husband. Mrs. Tennant told the jury her husband admitted making inappropriate comments to the second girl in the couple's bedroom while watching a movie with their other children one night.
Kenneth Tennant was not an assistant basketball coach at the time he's accused of misconduct. He started volunteering years later.
The boyfriend of one of the accusers said she first told him in 2014 that she had sex with Kenneth Tennant seven years earlier. "I knew that something was bothering (her) she would often distance herself, I could tell that something was eating at her."
