Senior Conestoga Football Players Suspended For Jokingly Hazing Freshman...And By Jokingly Hazing I Mean Doing 'No Gay Thursdays' Which Included Teabagging Faces And Shoving Broomsticks Up Butts

AP - Three senior football players at a suburban Philadelphia high school have been charged with assaulting a freshman with a broom handle on what the team called “No Gay Thursday,” a prosecutor announced Friday. Three 17-year-old students at Conestoga High School held down a 14-year-old boy on Oct. 15 and penetrated him with the broom handle while he screamed, Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan said. After the charges were announced, longtime head football coach John Vogan was suspended from all coaching duties pending the outcome of an investigation by the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District. The school investigation will “determine whether or not code of conduct violations occurred, the awareness and level of supervision provided by the coaching staff, and what further measures can promote inclusive and respectful behavior,” Superintendent Richard Gusick wrote on the district’s website, adding that students could face “firm but fair consequences.” There is no evidence the coaching staff was aware of the assault on the 14-year-old or the team’s hazing culture, Hogan said, because coaches typically stayed out of the locker room. “This was generally upperclassmen doing this to the underclassmen. Bigger kids doing it to smaller kids. Hazing,” he said. Vogan told The Associated Press that he had no comment. The suspects were charged as juveniles with assault, conspiracy, unlawful restraint, terroristic threats and other offenses. They will not face sexual assault charges because the law requires a motive of sexual gratification, which was not the case here, Hogan said. Authorities said the assault occurred after underclassmen were told to strip to their underwear and clean the team locker room at the school in Berwyn, about 25 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The 14-year-old stripped to his boxers, but when he decided he wanted no further part of it and tried to leave the locker room, he was blocked, held down and attacked, the prosecutor said. The 14-year-old was arrogant about making the varsity team, and that rankled the older players, Hogan said. “It just happened to be a perfect storm of this ‘No Gay Thursday’ tradition and them not liking this freshman and taking it out on him in a pretty horrible way,” he told the AP. “No Gay Thursdays” was a tradition started by the football team at least three or four years ago, in which behavior the team normally considered to be “gay” was considered “not gay” on Thursdays, Hogan said. Older players would come up behind younger players and put their genitals atop the younger players’ heads, among other sexually explicit or suggestive acts, the prosecutor said. He said the players also had a tradition of what they called “blessing each other,” in which a student, with his hand spread wide, would hit another player on the backside or back with such force it would leave a five-fingered mark. Some players would avoid the locker room on Thursdays, and some quit altogether because of the hazing, Hogan said.

STOGA! STOGA! STOGA! And to think all that was needed to win a Thanksgiving Day game against them was to take up the art of sodomy. Live and learn.

Listen, anyone who has grown up playing sports has through high school has either hazed or been hazed. It might not be the right of passage in 2016 as it used to be, but let’s face it, shit goes down in the locker room behind closed doors. I’m not exactly condoning hazing, but it is what it is and has been that way since the beginning of time. Who hasn’t had their bottom spanked blue before having to eat an entire jar of mayo to prove their loyalty? However, it usually doesn’t (and shouldn’t) get any farther than a simple Thank You Sir May I Have Another type of paddling or lunch money extortion. Maybe some Icy Hot in the girdle if you’re in the middle of a losing streak and need a spark for the team. But I think we can all agree this was no simple friendly case of grab-ass. Crossing the line to penetration and pure sexual assault doesn’t exactly build team commodore. Not to mention the entire concept of “No Gay Thursdays” is the most confusing thing that’s come out of the Main Line since they decided to close down Brownies. There are a lot of potential jokes here, but I don’t even want to tap-dance around any more about what potentially happened. The reality of the situation is if (key word, IF, don’t want another Duke Lacrosse situation on our hands) a 14-year-old kid got raped with a broomstick on school grounds by a couple of rich meatdicks. Not cool by any means.

PS – It’s a damn shame Stoga’s head coach John Vogan is going to take the fall for this one. The man is a good dude who wouldn’t have allowed this happy crap to happen if he sniffed ANYTHING was going down. One of the best football/baseball coaches around and an ever better person. Damn shame, indeed.