Lots of things go on inappropriate or unbecoming things can occur when high school team practices get a little heated, and intra-squad fights are certainly not rare. Sometimes they even seem to be tautly encouraged by coaching staffs who want to get more passion from their struggling teams.
The next time a player gets upset and starts to go after a teammate during a team scrimmage, they might want to remember Tyler Grimshaw, a 17-year-old Greece (N.Y.) Athena High hockey star who has been charged with third-degree assault after a fight between the teen and a 14-year-old teammate left Grimshaw's opponent with a concussion.
As reported by Rochester NBC affiliate WHEC and Rochester ABC affiliate WHAM among other outlets, Grimshaw finds himself facing an assault charge for the beat down he put on his unnamed teammate in the two teenagers' on-ice squabble. The 17-year-old was informed of the charges against him on Monday, leading to speculation but no formal announcement about what kind of punishment Grimshaw will have to serve.
While the Greece Central School District has refused to be drawn about where Grimshaw will go next, the teen intimated to friends on Twitter that he feels he will be not be allowed back at Greece Athena High, as you can tell from the following two Tweets:
@djspitale34 @fcarne12 I love you boys I'm gonna miss Athena #heartbroken
@djspitale34 na man guess I'm done senior year was gonna be sick to man hasn't sank in yet #wanttocry
The teen also unintentionally started a brief hashtag movement to overturn his punishments, with #FREEGRIMSHAW drawing a number of mentions from other Greece Athena students on Twitter.
To Prep Rally's memory, there is no clear precedent for how to punish a player who seriously injured his or her own teammate during a practice. To that end, one Greece (N.Y.) Thunder hockey parent said he thought the incident was a simple case of a disagreement going a bit too far beyond the realms of clubhouse etiquette, seeming to question whether the fight was really worth of an assault while simultaneously expressing concern for the victim.
"You know, having played sports in high school, we've been in locker rooms...things go on," Kevin Crowe, whose son plays on Grimshaw's Thunder team, told WHAM. "You don't want to hear about kids being injured."
Of course, in this case one of Grimshaw's teammates was injured, which is precisely what has brought the teen and his team a sense of notoriety that they might have never imaged would befall even in recent weeks.
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