Can good come from hazing incident?
I don’t know what’s going to happen next in Holdenville after a hazing incident was reported last week.
The details have become widely known — a freshman football player was the target of two junior football players. Investigators have said that the scrotum of one of the older players was rubbed on the younger players face. One of the older players was suspended from school for a year, the other for three days.
What happens now is anyone’s guess.
But here’s my hope — that everyone learns from this.
In the decade-plus that I’ve been in the state of Oklahoma, I can’t remember a case like this, an incident where an athlete was hazed in such a sexual manner. For that, I’m thankful. But I also think this is a great opportunity for coaches and players in Holdenville and elsewhere to talk about hazing.
I talked with a high school football coach Monday who said he planned to talk to his team that afternoon about hazing. It was their first practice since news of the Holdenville incident came to light, and he intended to address the issue with his team.
He said that hazing is a subject that is address periodically.
“That’s something that every coach worries about,” he said.
To have a story involving other athletes in the state of Oklahoma, though, made it hit a little closer to home, and he intended to use it as a teachable moment.
Here’s hoping that coach was not alone. Here’s hoping that hazing was a subject discussed by many other coaches and many other teams in many other places outside of Holdenville.
Our state has seen few cases like this. Perhaps this incident can be used to avoid others in the future.
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Ma’am, Coach Autry was my Jr and Sr. High school coach all the way back to 1975 at Mena Arkansas. He was very much a mentor at the time, for the young boys. He was instrumental in our making state Champs back in 1976, which is what got him many of the head coaching jobs, he later held. From what I know about his life, this type of actions by kids now days are not what he would advocate, but rather a sign of the times. I had no idea he was still coaching, much less in my home state. I plan to visit with him and meet a coach and mentor from my past.
V/R
Brent Nelson