Air Force Lacrosse Has Suspended The Entire Coaching Staff, Juniors and Seniors For A Hazing Incident
So there’s a good chance that most of you haven’t heard anything about what’s going on with the Air Force lacrosse team right now. So I’ll try to catch you up to speed here. It all started about a week ago when reports of hazing surfaced from a cadet who was leaving the Academy.
KRDO 13 – An email notification, which outlines those investigations, was obtained exclusively by KRDO NewsChannel 13.
The first deals with hazing, bullying, abusive sexual contact, and drug use occurring on the Academy’s lacrosse team. A cadet separating from the Academy reported similar incidents to administrators on his way out.
Now here’s the issue I’ve always had with hazing incidents. There’s a pretty fine line between what could be considered harmless team building activities and what can be considered legitimate hazing. Now what actually happened at the Air Force Academy is still yet to be disclosed so we have no idea how far over the line these guys crossed. I think the moment that “abusive sexual contact” comes into play that you’ve already put yourself more in the hazing category than team building activities. But do I think that guys should be suspended over making a couple of freshmen complete a case race? No, not at all. That’s normal college shit. Once you get to the point where you’re forcing each individual to crush a bottle to themselves in an hour and you’re actually putting their health in jeopardy, then you’re an asshole and you deserve to be punished. So we don’t know exactly where these incidents fall in terms of the degree of hazing, but it appears they’ve definitely crossed the line now that suspensions have been reported.
The Gazette - A widening probe into misconduct by the Air Force Academy’s conference champion lacrosse team has led to the suspension of players and coaches, the school announced Tuesday.
What the team members did wrong hasn’t been disclosed, but the academy’s rare announcement of the suspensions shows it is a matter that leaders view seriously. “Some members of the team and coaches have been put into an inactive status and will not participate in group lacrosse activities or intercollegiate competition, until further notice,” academy spokesman Lt. Col. Allen Herritage said. “These actions are effective today and may be revisited as the investigation progresses.”
According to an Inside Lacrosse report, the members of the team who have been suspended were the entire coaching stuff and members of both the senior and junior classes. All underclassmen are still eligible to participate in team activities. Not that there’s really a team to participate with right now or anything but it’s more or less “you guys aren’t on the verge of getting kicked out”.
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Now again, we still don’t know exactly went down and what the alleged hazing looked like. But you gotta imagine this isn’t going to be something that easily gets swept under the rug. This is a service academy. It’s not like they’re North Carolina dealing with an academic scandal where they can just say “sorry” without even meaning it and then move on. These guys are held to a higher standard than that and right now they’re giving the Air Force a bad name. It wouldn’t shock me in the slightest to see the Academy make an example out of these guys just to make sure another scandal like this doesn’t pop up again. It’s the lacrosse team, after all. And unfortunately, these types of incidents seem all too stereotypical for a lacrosse team.
So real quick, here is my plea to college lacrosse players all across the country. Just knock it the fuck off. Go get drunk with each other. Discretely smoke some weed after practice. Just be fucking normal college kids without taking anything to the extreme. That’s literally all you have to do. Just be normal and not force anybody to do some shit that they don’t want to do just because they’re playing on the same team as you. It’s literally so easy to both A) have fun and B) not get in trouble. People do it all the time. It’s the moment you let assholes take control of the team and start aggressively hazing kids that you end up on Barstool about the fate of your entire team being in jeopardy. End up on Barstool for the right reasons like a sick goal or a sick hit or something like that. Don’t make me have to write about you idiots getting your entire coaching staff suspended.