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NJ High School Cancels Football Season Amid Hazing Scandal

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by lcjjdnh, Oct 7, 2014.

  1. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    http://abcnews.go.com/US/freshmen-sayreville-football-team-lived-fear-official/story?id=26019515

    Younger kids on a New Jersey high school's football team were routinely taunted, bullied and intimidated by the older players, often with "sexual overtones," a local official told ABC News.

    "They would live in fear of seniors and juniors," the official said. "They would race to the locker room to get changed and get out before the older kids got there."

    The accusations come as Sayreville War Memorial High School shockingly canceled its football season Monday amid an investigation into hazing and bullying allegations.

    Someone called police last week about the alleged abuse, the official said.

    "It was a parent of a younger kid being taunted, threatened, bullied," the official added.
     
  2. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member



    Sounds like the Miami Dolphins.

    They're acting just like their NFL heroes.
     
  3. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    Sorry, Bob, but I'm betting there were parents in Sayreville who thought the same things.
     
  4. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    Well, there are two big differences between his team and a place like Sayreville:

    1. The freshmen and the upperclassmen barely interact. They're never on a bus together. They never practice together. I don't believe they even practice as long as the varsity, so they're out of the locker room by the time the upperclassmen arrive. So there's no access, if you will.

    2. These incidents seem to happen most often at schools where there is some homogeneity to the student body so that there are well-established power cliques. That is minimized at my son's school in two ways. First, there is no race/ethnicity that is a clear majority. Second, there are at least seven junior highs from four towns feeding into the school, so there's not even a group of junior high kids that comes in from a feeder school that has a clear majority.

    3. These incidents tend to happen in places where sports is clearly front and center in a community, and in a community that is much more worried about its sullying its glorious reputation to outsiders. As I've noted, my son's teammates go back to four different towns after practice (one of which is one of the poorest suburbs in the Chicago area), and the town where the school is located is one of two high schools. This is not a community that lives through its football team.

    The biggest violence-related issue at my kids' high school is not athletic hazing. It's girl fights. There was a hellacious one right outside the main gate after the opening home game of the football season, with multiple cops showing up.
     
  5. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    My little hometown was kind of like that. Yours truly went to Bumpkintown Elementary, Bumpkintown Junior High and then Bumpkintown High (enr. approx. 600). There were multiple elementary schools, but beyond that it was all Bumpkintown all the time.

    The pervasiveness of the high school football program was amazing. Our high school coach had been there for a long time, and across all levels of youth football offenses and defenses were exactly the same as those run by the high school. A quarterback at my high school had been running the same offense since near toddler-hood. And in the fall, well, Bumpkintown football was all there was, and the whole town went bonkers over it.

    There's a part of me that kind of grieves that my children -- who went/go/will go to this massive suburban Texas high school -- won't have those memories. But I'm not unmindful of the cost(s) of that kind of high school experience.
     
  6. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    I saw the contrast last year when my son's team went to play Batavia, a deep suburban high school that was a one-school, one-team town. The stands were packed, a lot of them kids with youth football jerseys that matched the high school colors. No doubt running the same schemes that the high school team ran. It was mighty clear The Game was The Event in town. My son's team won that game, but Batavia got the last laugh, beating his team in the state finals.
     
  7. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    One of the uglier hazing incidents I've been around was at an urban private school that did not have the homogeneous student body you are talking about and the parents and public were shocked to find any kind of violence issue in the school. And as a private high school, there was no one, set feeder system. It wasn't as widespread in the program as this story, but it was disturbing.

    I didn't say your son's school was the same as Sayreville. I'm saying that you might want to be a bit more careful in your assumptions regarding what does and does not happen in that school.
     
  8. jr/shotglass

    jr/shotglass Well-Known Member

    School board unanimously upholds the decision to cancel at a cantankerous meeting.

    http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2014/10/sayreville_football_scandal_live_updates_from_board_of_education_meeting_tuesday_at_7_pm.html
     
  9. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    Really, the most shocking thing about this Sayreville story is that the school is putting the hammer down. Usually the school is just as complicit as anyone else in trying to sweep this under the rug.
     
  10. BitterYoungMatador2

    BitterYoungMatador2 Well-Known Member

    I like the one asking when elections are. Just once in a situation like this would I love to see a rogue board member tell a pissed off crowd, "Do you think we did this because we're fucking bored? The thought ever occur to you hammerheads that maybe, just maybe, we've seen some information that's damning enough - information we cant release because its part of an investigation - to justify this, you twatwaffles."
     
  11. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    I wouldn't be shocked to see a football slate of candidates file for the next school board election. After all, I've seen a school board ousted because it changed the high school's nickname from "Injuns" to "Titans." That was in 2005. By 2006, a new board changed the name back to "Indians." You know, not to be totally racist.
     
  12. BitterYoungMatador2

    BitterYoungMatador2 Well-Known Member

    Ohh totally. Expect some community action group - something called Sayreville For Ethical Footballing - to spawn from this with the sole intent to get pro-football candidates on the board. School needs books? Fuck 'em. we need a new weight room. Special Education department isn't state compliant? Fuck 'em. They're tards so they won't even notice. In my 10 years as a reporter the biggest school board meeting I ever covered was one where they were considering firing the high school basketball coach. The entire community came out to voice opinions. When they closed three elementary schools and tax increases no one said shit.
     
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