Disturbing New Trend In High School Football

[pineda]

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Hazing allegations put RGV team to shame

by Tracey Eaton

Dallas Morning News

Back when men wore crew cuts and the Twist was the latest dance craze, an unheralded high school football team won the state championship, putting this small, struggling South Texas town on the map.

More than four decades later, the Donna Redskins have again drawn the spotlight, but this time, townspeople are shaken and embarrassed.

Three varsity players have been arrested, accused of pinning down freshmen players in the locker room and sexually assaulting them. The athletic director/coach and two other coaches have been fired.

Since then, seven more players have come forward to say they were victims of sexual hazing involving the football, baseball and basketball teams. All were 14 or 15 years old at the time of the incidents, school officials say. As yet, no charges have been filed, and police decline to comment.

And the incident here is indicative of a disturbing national trend, experts say.

"The whole trend of sexual hazing is kind of disturbing," said Indianapolis researcher Hank Nuwer, author of High School Hazing: When Rites Become Wrongs. "And no doubt about it, the violence is increasing."

In the August and September incidents, police charged Derick Castillo, 18, the Donna Redskins' star quarterback, and two other players, Raynardo Magallanes, 18, and Jason Leal, 17, with third-degree felony sexual assault, municipal court complaints show. The two older players were arrested, and the younger student was released to his parents.

The father of one of the boys played down the accusation and said his son did not want to talk about it. The other two students could not be reached for comment.

"When I heard some of the things they were doing, I felt it crossed the line and immediately called for a police investigation," Donna School Superintendent Joe Gonzalez said.

As the investigation continues, this proud South Texas town of 15,000 is struggling to sort out what happened and how deep the problem goes.

"This thing shook up Donna because we're crazy about football," said Paul Ortiz, Mr. Castillo's cousin. "Football is huge here."

Traditionally, residents have rallied around the Donna Redskins, the 1961 state champs whose colors are proudly splashed across the water towers at both ends of town.

But some say now that no matter how much they love their team, they won't tolerate players who assault their teammates.

"What they committed has nothing to do with hazing or initiation. What they did was a crime," said Fernando Castillo, a former Redskin player and now principal of the 1,853-student school.

Across town, Mr. Magallanes' father sharply disagrees, saying that what went on in the locker room was harmless fun.

"It was just horseplay," said Ricardo Tovar, adding that the episode has been blown out of proportion. "Half the story's not even true. People here are lying."

"It wasn't really hazing," added Ray Ortega, 17, a senior who expects to play center on the team this fall. "It was more like wrestling."

Hazed become 'hazers'

Whatever it's called, some experts say, sexual violence and bullying seem to be rising in high schools across America.

Texas and 43 other states have laws against hazing, "but you don't see the numbers going down," Mr. Nuwer said. "There's more reporting of these incidents now than ever."

Mr. Nuwer keeps a nationwide database of hazing cases dating to 1905, when Ohio students put snow down the back of classmate William Taylor, 13, who died of pneumonia not long afterward.

More recent hazing tactics include forcing students to run around naked with crackers between their cheeks; play Twister in the nude; or sit naked on blocks of ice.In 2001, football players in Tulsa allegedly beat a 14-year-old's genitals with traffic cones, then sodomized him with a broom handle.

"The hazers tend to be those students who were hazed the year before," said Norman Pollard, who led a landmark Alfred University study that found that about 1.5 million high school students are hazed each year.

"In order to give significance to their experience, they ratchet it up a notch, making it more difficult, humiliating and violent than the year before. After a few years, it escalates to the point where it can no longer be kept secret," said Mr. Pollard, the university's director of counseling and student development.

School investigation

In Donna, no one knows how long students managed to keep their alleged rites under wraps.

The Donna High investigation began in February after a teacher overheard ninth-graders talking about the football team's supposed initiation rites and reported it.

On Feb. 23, three students were charged with third-degree felony sexual assault in connection with reported assaults on two students in the Donna locker room, municipal court complaints show.

Authorities allege that the three attacked students with latex-covered fingers, waved their genitals and pinned down at least one victim and slapped around his private parts.

Mr. Gonzalez said that say if any hazing was going on at the 1,853-student school before last summer, he didn't know about it.

He also defended the reputation of the Redskins team, which has made the district playoffs 23 times.

"This is an isolated situation," he said. "This is not a reflection of our athletics program. This is a group of kids who made a wrong decision, and now they'll have to pay the consequences."

3 coaches fired

Others are paying a price, too.

On March 10, the Donna Independent School District Board fired David Evans, the high school's athletic director and football coach; Alfredo Holguin, assistant football coach; and Robert Gracia, the freshman football coach.

Their lawyers have ordered all three to keep quiet.

"I can't talk to any media regardless of anything," one said by phone before hanging up.

Mr. Evans, his supporters say, didn't know what was going on and shouldn't be blamed. Nor should he have been expected to constantly watch the locker room, lest parents accuse him of being a pervert, they say.

But school board members, including some of the coach's close friends, removed him anyway.

"There's an accountability level for everybody," board member Luie Solis explained.

"The vast majority of the community" favored the firings, school board president Matthew Jones added.

Mr. Jones played football for Donna High in the 1980s and said he's convinced that what went on in the locker room was "not everyday rough-housing."

"Some people are indifferent, but once they hear the facts, they realize this wasn't just horseplay," he said. "It's terrible the things that allegedly went on."

Back in 1961

Players from Donna High's 1961 championship team say the whole affair is embarrassing.

"We didn't have time for hazing," said Alfredo Avila, 61, a former running back who lives in San Antonio.

Their coach, Earl Scott, was famous for subjecting players to grueling workouts. "The coach worked us to death. He wouldn't even give us water."

"We started with 50 kids and ended up with 18 or 19," said Luz Pedraza, the 1961 team's former quarterback. "The guys that quit couldn't take the workouts."

Today, some young people don't understand the value of hard work, he said. "They want everything handed to them on a platter."

Perhaps some of that old sense of pride is missing, said Jorge Iber, a Texas Tech University history professor who has written about the 1961 team.

"The majority of players on the 1961 team were Mexican-Americans," he said. "They had a tremendous pride in their abilities to compete against anyone and beat anyone. Maybe we've lost some of that."

Donna coaches say whatever may have happened, the entire team shouldn't be blamed.

"These kids outwork anybody that I've ever been associated with," said Mike Burget, first assistant offensive coordinator for the varsity team. "We've got a lot of great kids. And there are a lot of positive things that get overlooked."

Donna athletes just won their sixth straight regional power-lifting meet, for instance, but few people are paying attention to that right now, he said.

"It's a hard time for the coaches and the kids," he said. "We're trying to get back on track."

But players say it isn't easy.

"Everywhere you go, the public looks at you weird," said Mr. Ortega, the football team's center. "The city of Donna should be supporting the football players, not putting us down."

(note from pineda: State Representative Al Edwards has filed a bill aimed to curtail "the bumping and grinding" that goes on at the sidelines by girls performing "sexually suggestive" dance and cheer routines. But somehow, his topic of discussion pales in comparison to this.)

what people in Montgomery County think of Edwards' plan