A hazing incident in North Carolina has led to the drastic decision to cancel a team's entire season.
As reported by MyFox8.com and the Greensboro News & Record, High Point (N.C.) T.W. Andrews High disbanded its entire junior varsity basketball team after a hazing incident within the squad. According to school officials, five members of the team were involved in the incident, and all have since been dismissed and are facing charges of hazing and assault in a juvenile court. The remaining members of the JV team were summarily promoted to the school's varsity squad.
"We don't tolerate hazing, and we don't tolerate bullying," Guilford County Schools representative Lillian Govus told MyFox8.com. "We made sure we dealt with this as soon as we found out about it."
According to the Greensboro Fox affiliate, the incident involved five members of the junior varsity squad slapping a teammate in the face with a plastic water bottle, then dropping him head first into a trash can.
All five students who were involved in the assault are below the age of 16, which led to their petition to have their case heard in a juvenile court. Additionally, all five teens were immediately handed five-day school suspensions for the incident.
Still, canceling a full season for an entire squad is one of the most drastic anyone could imagine, and one of the more harsh sentences Prep Rally has ever come across. Considering the fact that (in theory) seven players on that team weren't involved in the incident, promoting them directly to a varsity squad where they will most likely spend their time on the bench seems like a punishment for them, as well.
At the same time, if that's what it takes to cut brutal hazing off at the path, then perhaps the Guilford County Schools are doing the right thing, regardless of what it does for the program's future.
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