Hazy Question: Who'll Lose Their Season?
by Jac Coyne |
Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff | Coyne
Archive
If history is any guide, there is going to be an ugly story
surfacing in the next six months.
It's going to be a familiar narrative. It should be, since the
story has been told every year for the past six seasons.
We saw it with the UC Santa Barbara women, the Arizona women and the Glenbrook South boy's team in 2004. There was
the Rice men's and women's lacrosse programs in
2005. It was an epic year in 2006, with the Hartwick men along with the Niagara, Manhattan and Catholic women following the plotline. It was the Millersville women in 2007 and the Ypsilanti boy's squad in 2008.
And last year we had the Curry and Arizona State men.
By now you've figured it out, and are likely thinking to yourself,
"Great, another story about lacrosse teams and hazing."
Yes, but I'm hoping the high school and college players getting
ready for this upcoming season will peruse the stories linked above
and realize the standard to determine hazing is extremely low.
Then, hopefully, they can make decisions to keep their seasons
afloat.
Do I think all of the teams that have been busted for hazing were
deserving of a stiff punishment, like the cancellation of a season?
Do you think they were?
See, that's the thing. It doesn't matter.
When a school administration learns of a party or gathering where
they think hazing took place, it isn't going to nuance the
situation. The school's discipline committee won't attempt to
figure out who is guilty and who isn't, or who was shaving
somebody's head and who was in the library. It will just cancel the
season for everyone and hope the impending public relations
nightmare isn't too bad.
Also, when it hits the TV outlets, newspapers and the Internet
about how your team participated in hazing - especially when it
involves underage drinking - it will anger a lot of people who are
usually in your corner.
The school president will have to field calls from parents saying
he/she is not protecting their kids. The athletic director will
look like he/she is running a department with no institutional
control. Your coach will appear to have his/her head in
the sand.
When those things happen, you make key stakeholders look like
chumps. As a result, they're not going to put up much of a fight
protecting you or your season when the heat comes down. Could you
blame them?
I'm kind of getting a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach
writing about this because it's going to happen to some team this
year. You can book it.
A bunch of guys or girls are going to be sitting around on a
Saturday night and will come up with what they think is a harmless
prank or the perpetuation of a team ‘tradition.' Alcohol is
going to be infused into the situation and photos are going to be
taken. The next morning, the captains will be summoned to the
Dean's office.
It'll be there that they will roll out every timeless excuse that
never works:
"It was a team-building exercise."
"No one was going to get hurt."
"We've been doing this stuff for years."
"We told them they didn't have to do it."
And within 48 hours, the season will be toast and you'll have the
rest of your life to decide whether it was worth it.
Is it right?
Well, I could certainly make an argument that the definition of
hazing has become too broad (doesn't having the freshmen bring the
ball bags out to practice technically fulfill a criterion for
hazing?), but I think you and I both know what kind of stuff is
going to cost you several games, if not a season.
So don't bother asking moralistic questions about whether it's
"right" to cancel your spring because of hazing. Don't try to
figure out what is "too much." Don't risk your season because all
of the rookies "seemed cool about drinking a couple of beers."
Don't assume to know how someone is going to feel the next morning
even if they laughed the night before.
It's not worth it.
Alas, there will be a program that will suffer the ultimate
punishment this spring because of something as needless as
hazing.
Just make sure it's not your team.
