Hazing Muddies End Of Agawam HS Football Season
AGAWAM (CBS) - With just days left in the season, the football season came to a sudden halt at Agawam High School, amid accusations of hazing.
Football practices at the school were cancelled over the weekend, after several freshmen reported that older players snapped towels at them and doused them with cold water last Wednesday.
WBZ-TV's Karen Anderson reports
Four players were suspended from school and the team for ten days. Four coaches, including the head coach, were placed on leave.
Superintendent Mary Czajkowski was debating whether to allow the rest of the team to finish off their season in the Thanksgiving Day game against West Springfield. On Monday afternoon she announced the game would be played, though the suspended players and coaches would not be on the field.
Head Coach Mike Peterson appeared at a press conference with Czaikowski on Monday. He was not in the locker room at the time, but other coaches were. Czaikowski says the coaches were aware of the law, but she believes they did not take it seriously. "I'm grateful a tragedy didn't happen because it could have happened absolutely."
The Superintendent says the annual team luncheon and pep rally will be allowed, but she has canceled the bonfire as a result of the hazing incident.
Massachusetts state law makes hazing illegal. It defines hazing as "any conduct or method of initiation into any student organization, whether on public or private property, which willfully or recklessly endangers the physical or mental health of any student or other person. Such conduct shall include whipping, beating, branding, forced calisthenics, exposure to weather, forced consumption of any food, liquor, beverage or other substance, or any other brutal treatment or forced physical activity which is likely to adversely affect the physical health or safety of any such student or other person, or which subjects such students or other person to extreme mental stress, including extended deprivation of sleep or rest or extended isolation."
WBZ's Karen Anderson contributed to this report.
