I have an athlete daughter too and sports alone won't get her anywhere. And she isn't trying hard if she's failing two classes. I'm surprised they don't suspend her from sports until her grades are up.
My #1 guess when a teen rolls out of control is drugs, not a nice thing to think about, but I have been there, been shocked, swore my daughter never would and my daughter was. This is my oldest daughter, who is now 28. The violence is very over-the-top not normal for a teenager her age and indicates she is possibly using drugs which are spinning her out of control. If she is not using drugs, then she is mentally ill and, yes, she needs help. You can go to the county mental health center...they have a sliding scale and let many people go for help free of charge. You can go to a church for pastoral counseling, if she is in any way religious and you think that may help. We have very little money too, and always did, but we did find people who would work with us for our daughter. Sadly, she would not cooperate though. At the very least, if your daughter won't either, YOU need therapy, free or not, so that you can cope better. All of us go a little nuts when our kids do.
I have some questions that will give us a better idea of what is going on. How was she as a baby, infant and child? How is her home life? Did she suffer any hard times or trauma in her very early years? Is she in an intact home with mom and dad? If not, who is there? Any abuse happen to her? Is she biological or adopted? Has she EVER been diagnosed with anything or been put on any medication?
Round Two: Do you monitor her cell phone and Face Book because if you don't, now is the time. You will not know exactly what kind of things she is into, if you don't snoop. We warrier moms are notorious snoops because we can't help our child if we don't know what is going on. I used to search my daughter's bedroom when she was out and that's where we first found out she smoked pot. For the longest time, we thought that was all she did. We had this "She has no time" and "Not my baby" attitude, which was naive. Now that she is clean, we know that she not only did more than pot and alcohol, but that she had done meth, downers, uppers, and even tried heroine. These kids are great at hiding when they get high...it is often when we are sleeping. They can also look us straight in our eyes when we plead to know what is going on and say, "I can't believe you don't trust me." Do you like your daughter's friends? They are an indication of what she is doing when you're not around. Gads, if she is getting into trouble because of her cell phone or the internet, take those weapons away from her and I don't care how loud she screams.
Letting up on her won't help her. Perhaps trying to clamp down on her won't either and she may really act abusive toward you for doing it too...it's not pleasant to do that. It may not even work because it didn't work for me, but we felt we had to try and let her know how unacceptable we found her behavior. The money tree stopped once we knew about the pot and cigarettes. She got no money from us for anything after that. If she needed something, we bought it. She did get a job. I feel this helped her from getting worse. I do know she spent some of her job money on drugs, but also had to buy her own clothes etc. We bought healthy food and she ate with us, although she didn't have much of an appetite in her drug days. Coke kills your appetite. j
No matter what is going on, you have a troubled child and until we know more, we don't know if she was born that way (most kids who get us to come here are) or if she had some very bad experiences or a little bit of both (my daughter had been raped on top of being adopted and born with a sensitive personality that made her an easy dupe for the "bad" kids). She did straighten out on her own after she no longer lived with us and I am very grateful.
I am really sorry you are having so many problems. They don't have to last forever. God help me though, honey, you need to find a way...any way...to get her help, and you need to snoop around to find out exactly what is going on in her life. She isn't going to tell you.
Big hugs and let us know more soon!