International I Hate Sports Club

Thursday, September 23, 2010
Man High football team punished for bullying
by The Associated Press
The Associated Press

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A high school football coach hoping to identify players involved in a locker room incident that injured a student punished the team's upperclassmen when no one came forward.

The players at Man High School wouldn't tell coach Harvey Arms who was involved in injuring sophomore Justin Cantrell on Sept. 14. So Arms made the players run extra laps after practice, Logan County schools attorney Leslie Tyree said Thursday.

No underclassmen were involved. Arms "explained to them that if something did happen, it better not happen again,'' Tyree said.

The county school board decided after meeting with Cantrell's father that a coach would be in the locker room at all times when players are present.

"I think it's probably over as far as the investigation goes,'' Tyree said.

David Cantrell said he didn't like the board's decision.

"That's not satisfactory to me,'' Cantrell said. "They're trying to cover it up. It was awful what was done to my son.''

Cantrell said his 15-year-old son had swollen testicles, bruised ribs and wounds to his head, and was bleeding from his ears. Cantrell said he took his son to a family doctor, then to an emergency room.

According to the father, several football players grabbed Justin Cantrell in the locker room and spread his legs apart. Some of the players kicked him in the groin.

"All he could do was shut his eyes and cry,'' David Cantrell said. "It hurt him so bad.''

The incident happened in a doorway separating the upperclassmen from underclassmen. Cantrell said the players involved were juniors and seniors and his son was able to identify some to Man Principal Sandra Manning.

Logan County schools policy calls for suspensions and possible expulsion for hazing. Tyree said no other punishment was meted out because the players weren't identified with certainty.

"If you don't have 100 percent identification by the victim, it's awfully difficult to use rumor and innuendo,'' Tyree said. "I've got to have something a little more concrete than that. I have to have something more than just suspicion.''

Cantrell said his son's eyes were closed during the incident in part because he didn't want to lose his contact lenses.

According to Cantrell, Manning called some of the players into her office, confiscated their cell phones and deleted a video allegedly taken of the incident by one of the players. Cantrell said he had threatened legal action if the video was posted on the Internet.

"She called me and told me it was erased,'' Cantrell said.

Manning didn't immediately return a telephone message Thursday. A secretary in Manning's office referred calls to Tyree. Arms declined comment.

Justin Cantrell has played football since the fifth grade but refused to try out for the high school team as a ninth grader.

"I said, 'Why?' David Cantrell said. "He said, 'because they give you an initiation and they call it a beat down.'''

The elder Cantrell said some of the players involved were 18.

"It's wrong for them to jump on a 15 year old,'' he said.

The younger Cantrell is humiliated but remains on the team and still attends practices.

"He said he's not going to let it deter him,'' Cantrell said.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

9 Comments on "Man High football team punished for bullying"

kdl (7 hours ago)
Helllloooo...if someone recorded it on their phone, why didn't they get those responsible from it before they deleted it?



Gomerrr (7 hours ago)
We have an aricle about the principal at Hurricane High allowing a teacher with "prior mental issues" to remain teaching. Now, we have a beat down assualt, with serious injuries, and the principal deleted the video of the assualt and no one is punished.

Incredible.

We have unions protecting the teachers at every turn, but who is protecting the students????



Gomerrr (7 hours ago)
The principal deleted the video?? No one is being punished for this beating because they can't be identified, and the principal deleted the video????

How damn stupid is this principal??

Cover up, anyone????



DAZEDNCONFUSED (7 hours ago)
Let these jock !!&!&@*@ sit a night ot two in jail, next to Chester the molester.......There are hoodlums like this in every school. Pampered, feared, allowed to do anything they want.....Not all jocks are like this but some are..



OpinionPole (11 hours ago)
I'm glad my kids don't attend school there....sounds to me that the whole team needs expelled and the season dropped!



nun yer bidness2 (4:03pm 09-23-2010)
Time to drop football at Man HS. Apparently, participating in the sport does nothing to instill character in the students there.



SportsNut (3:43pm 09-23-2010)
I agree that the punishment does not fit the crime. My question is this, why does the boy that was assaulted not say who was the one doing stuff to him. I didn't read that he was unconscious or that he was blindfolded or anything, so it would seem to me he would know who. The bad part is innocent people will be punished because of a/some punk(s).



Jenny Sue (3:08pm 09-23-2010)
That kid took a BEATING, that is not bullying, it is ASSAULT. This problem apparently is more than the coach or principal know how to deal with. I hope each of those "athletes" gets an interview with the police. Maybe the "sport" needs suspended at that school for, uh, unsportsmanlike behavior!



hmmm... (2:42pm 09-23-2010)
That's it? Extra laps as punishment for assault? Unbelievable. I sincerely hope the father gets the state police involved. The coach should be fired, not only for allowing the incident to happen, but for failure to conduct any significant investigation and followup. Instead of punishment, these young thugs are rewarded with extra conditioning drills. The appropriate response would have been for the coach to say that unless the responsibile parties come forward, nobody plays the next game, and if it's a forfeit too bad.

http://www.dailymail.com/Sports/PrepSports/201009230367

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Speaking as a father, this scandal sickens me. If I were the boy's father, my blood would be boiling. (I would also be crying. And if anyone thinks such a comment is "fem" or unmanly, well, stick it.) Where do kids get the idea that ganging up on someone and beating him makes them tough? The cell phone video should have been turned over to the police! Although I realize that lie detector tests are not always reliable, I would order all upperclassmen on the team to take them. I could rant, but this is all I'm going to say now.

Edit: Contrary to the news article's title (unless there have been further developments since this news item was reported), there actually has been no real punishment.

This is just terrible. It's sickening that people can just stand by and watch, or even videotape or participate in such actions. I think crime involving students is handled terribly, if a group of people did this to an adult somewhere, those people would have been arrested for assault with no questions asked, but the most that will happen in a case like this, even when someone has to be taken to the emergency room, as getting expelled.

The change room isn't the safest place in high school. I dreaded going to the change room from middle school to grade nine. In middle school, after gym class, the arrogant jocks would turn off the lightswitches and flail their arms everywhere and throw solid objects everywhere trying to hurt people who can't see. This wasn't a fun thing to experience every day I had gym in middle school. Then, in my freshman year of high school when gym was mandatory, since there were multiple gyms, there were multiple classes of different grades in the change room before and after class. One time, an obnoxious grade eleven or twelve jock went into the change room before gym class and threw my backpack on the ground, spilling all of my binders and books on the floor, with many papers disorganized. I muttered "Fucking douchebag" to myself, but made sure it was loud enough for him to hear because I didn't want to put up with his bullshit. Then he said "Did you just call me a Jew bag?", so I said "No, I called you a douchebag". Since this person couldn't control his anger, he slammed me into a wall covered in hooks to hang backpacks and coats, which I hit my eye on, and he then threw me over a bench and slammed me to the ground. He said "Don't talk to me" I said "Okay", but since I said "Okay", that counted as talking to him I guess, so he continued to violently attack me. This guy was about 200 pounds and was at least two or three years older than me, and he attacked me for something that he started. And what bugged me was that there were several seniors that could have easily broken up the fight, but they just watched and laughed like everyone else. It truly is pathetic.

Good choice on the victim's part to not pursue football if he is just going to be picked on by imbeciles like them.

Oh WOW! So the bullies were made to run a few extra laps around the gymnasium!

Let me guess . . . like two or three extra laps. BIG FUCKING DEAL!

Yeah! That'll teach 'em! Eh?

No, those bullies needed to be expelled from school and do some jail time, and their parents also need to do some jail time for contributing to their delinquency.

I have known parents who actually encouraged their sons to be bullies, and some of their kids ended up in prison as adults for crimes they commented as adults some years after leaving high school.

These punks are being taught to act like criminals by their own parents.

Maybe if we put their parents in jail for a few years, and they discover that they had lost their jobs after being released from jail, and lose their right to vote for about 10 years, that might send them a signal that they need to teach their kids to respect the rights of others.

Oh! But that would mean the demise of the Republican party. The right-wing politicians would lose the "Bubbah Vote" that they count on so much to help them with their agenda to insert Creationist fairy tales into the high school science classes and to expel Thomas Jefferson from the history texts.

Yeah! The possible demise of the Republican party! Oh my!

TOO FUCKING BAD!!!

HugeFanOfBadReligion wrote:This is just terrible. It's sickening that people can just stand by and watch, or even videotape or participate in such actions. I think crime involving students is handled terribly, if a group of people did this to an adult somewhere, those people would have been arrested for assault with no questions asked, but the most that will happen in a case like this, even when someone has to be taken to the emergency room, as getting expelled.

You're not kidding. If an adult were assaulted in this manner by a couple of thugs, he would see them in court; and they would be in deep, deep trouble. But because this happened to a minor in a high-school locker-room, it's quite possible that the assailants will never be punished or disciplined.

HugeFanOfBadReligion wrote:The change room isn't the safest place in high school. I dreaded going to the change room from middle school to grade nine. In middle school, after gym class, the arrogant jocks would turn off the lightswitches and flail their arms everywhere and throw solid objects everywhere trying to hurt people who can't see. This wasn't a fun thing to experience every day I had gym in middle school. Then, in my freshman year of high school when gym was mandatory, since there were multiple gyms, there were multiple classes of different grades in the change room before and after class. One time, an obnoxious grade eleven or twelve jock went into the change room before gym class and threw my backpack on the ground, spilling all of my binders and books on the floor, with many papers disorganized. I muttered "Fucking douchebag" to myself, but made sure it was loud enough for him to hear because I didn't want to put up with his bullshit. Then he said "Did you just call me a Jew bag?", so I said "No, I called you a douchebag". Since this person couldn't control his anger, he slammed me into a wall covered in hooks to hang backpacks and coats, which I hit my eye on, and he then threw me over a bench and slammed me to the ground. He said "Don't talk to me" I said "Okay", but since I said "Okay", that counted as talking to him I guess, so he continued to violently attack me. This guy was about 200 pounds and was at least two or three years older than me, and he attacked me for something that he started. And what bugged me was that there were several seniors that could have easily broken up the fight, but they just watched and laughed like everyone else. It truly is pathetic.

Good choice on the victim's part to not pursue football if he is just going to be picked on by imbeciles like them.

For decades I've heard the claim that athletics builds character. I've heard that claim over and over and over and over again. Now, I realize that some sports fans are reasonable. So, the following question is not directed towards them. It is directed towards those who believe that athletics or sports build character, with the clear implication that nonathletic boys who chose to not participate in sports are somehow deficient or even inferior. The question I ask those people is ...
Is this the sort of character that sports is supposed to build? Well, is it? Tell me, do these thugs have character? Do you consider them to be role models? Good grief!

What jerks!

I'm agitated by this as well, Earl, for many reasons. The fact that NOBODY seems to acknowledge people like these for the brutal, callous arseholes that they are, including the school authorities who should be doing their best to protect their students and crack down on any serious assaults like this happening in school, instead of covering things up so that they'll have a good sports team to represent the school. The fact that girls, who are meant to be so kind, caring and loving, actually would admire and wish to date these thuggish morons who have absolutely no hesitation in inflicting unjustified physical assaults on other students. The fact that people like this are allowed to get away with such behaviour for the sole reason that they're good at playing some game. It's only a damn game! But for some reason, it has become the be-all and end-all, the thing that makes some "superior" and others "inferior". I'm surprised that this kid wants to remain on the team after this. If there was no justification at all for the assault, I'd have been out of there instantly and would have tried to change school as well. Is this sort of terrible brutality what makes people "real men"?

Best regards,
i_like_1981

What evil people! If this happened on the outside world this would be classed as assult. How on earth can people do this!?

The Principle who deleted the video needs her head examined though, who on earth would delete evidence like that?

HugeFanOfBadReligion wrote:This is just terrible. It's sickening that people can just stand by and watch, or even videotape or participate in such actions. I think crime involving students is handled terribly, if a group of people did this to an adult somewhere, those people would have been arrested for assault with no questions asked, but the most that will happen in a case like this, even when someone has to be taken to the emergency room, as getting expelled.

The change room isn't the safest place in high school. I dreaded going to the change room from middle school to grade nine. In middle school, after gym class, the arrogant jocks would turn off the lightswitches and flail their arms everywhere and throw solid objects everywhere trying to hurt people who can't see. This wasn't a fun thing to experience every day I had gym in middle school. Then, in my freshman year of high school when gym was mandatory, since there were multiple gyms, there were multiple classes of different grades in the change room before and after class. One time, an obnoxious grade eleven or twelve jock went into the change room before gym class and threw my backpack on the ground, spilling all of my binders and books on the floor, with many papers disorganized. I muttered "Fucking douchebag" to myself, but made sure it was loud enough for him to hear because I didn't want to put up with his bullshit. Then he said "Did you just call me a Jew bag?", so I said "No, I called you a douchebag". Since this person couldn't control his anger, he slammed me into a wall covered in hooks to hang backpacks and coats, which I hit my eye on, and he then threw me over a bench and slammed me to the ground. He said "Don't talk to me" I said "Okay", but since I said "Okay", that counted as talking to him I guess, so he continued to violently attack me. This guy was about 200 pounds and was at least two or three years older than me, and he attacked me for something that he started. And what bugged me was that there were several seniors that could have easily broken up the fight, but they just watched and laughed like everyone else. It truly is pathetic.

Good choice on the victim's part to not pursue football if he is just going to be picked on by imbeciles like them.

I must say that's a terrible thing to happen, what a spineless coward. Did the person who did this face any reprocutions for what he did?

Lewis wrote:I must say that's a terrible thing to happen, what a spineless coward. Did the person who did this face any reprocutions for what he did?

Nope, nobody really tells the school about things like that, and I didn't tell anyone either. I'm not sure what would have happened if the school was told about it.

Of course they wouldn't have done anything. You know why? Because he plays SPORTS! Wow, you can't allow him to be punished! That's absurd! He shouldn't have to fear any repercussions for even his most violent and threatening acts, because he's good at throwing BALLS! WOW! That's, like, fucking INCREDIBLE! And you know what? Thousands of people are getting away with this sort of behaviour because they're good at playing GAMES as well! I mean, this is just astounding! Maybe I should go out, get some shorts and a shirt with a number and another man's name on the back, run round kicking a ball, get the whole world bowing down at my feet for it and then start committing crimes, and I won't be punished at all, because I'm an ATHLETE! What an idea!

Knowing that shit like this is going on in the world with nobody caring at all about stopping it, sometimes I really just want to jump out my flat window.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

Indeed, I can't possibly understand what the reasoning is behind letting jocks do whatever the hell they want. The closest reason (but definitely not a remotely good reason) I can imagine why they do it in a school is because if a school has good athletes, then it promotes the school's reputation, and at least in the case of my school and the other major school in my town, there is a huge rivalry going on between the two major high schools, mainly in athletics, and everyone in the school, including the school staff, want their school to crush the other school. Of course they don't want to punish one of the schools best athletes because they want him to play on all the sports teams so the school is superior to the other school (at least according to them). So basically, the school's staff is okay with kids getting tormented as long as the school gets a good reputation in athletics and beats the other school in the football game.

I heard that in the last football game that happened on Thursday that my school played in, one of the other school's players had his tibia completely shattered by one of our players, and had to have an ambulance come. Well, one of our school's coaches got it on tape, and apparently the coach is planning on playing the video for the school, and posting it on Youtube. How pathetic, a grown adult humiliates a kid probably less than half his age at another school by showing everyone a video of him getting seriously injured. And no one in the school is slightly against it.

Also, a couple days ago, one of the football players was trying to anger me by telling me about how the football team is going to celebrate their victory at some restaurant, then he claimed that there was going to be "groupies" there, so if I may translate this to as JIM would say it, he claimed that he would be "getting some tang". I told him I doubted that anyone on the football team would get laid at a restaurant, so he basically just said the most childish argument back "You're just jealous". I told him that I'm not jealous that he prances around grabbing a bunch of sweaty guys while wearing a purple jersey. He then said he was going to tell the whole football team I said that, and that he'd get them all to beat me up. Apparently, he couldn't do it himself when I said it to his face, so he needs his pathetic buddies to help him. I'm not worried though, maybe I should be, but I'm not. I don't even think anything will happen.

i_like_1981 wrote:I'm agitated by this as well, Earl, for many reasons. The fact that NOBODY seems to acknowledge people like these for the brutal, callous arseholes that they are, including the school authorities who should be doing their best to protect their students and crack down on any serious assaults like this happening in school, instead of covering things up so that they'll have a good sports team to represent the school. The fact that girls, who are meant to be so kind, caring and loving, actually would admire and wish to date these thuggish morons who have absolutely no hesitation in inflicting unjustified physical assaults on other students. The fact that people like this are allowed to get away with such behaviour for the sole reason that they're good at playing some game. It's only a damn game! But for some reason, it has become the be-all and end-all, the thing that makes some "superior" and others "inferior". I'm surprised that this kid wants to remain on the team after this. If there was no justification at all for the assault, I'd have been out of there instantly and would have tried to change school as well. Is this sort of terrible brutality what makes people "real men"?

Best regards,
i_like_1981

The sports media, which is a propaganda mill instead of serving as a journalistic institution, is largely responsible for this. There's a lot of stuff that goes on in certain school sports that the sports media simply will not report, and I think their omission is deliberate. How many sportswriters and sports columnists even mention that some school athletes in certain sports are bullies? How many of them report about the preferential treatment that school athletes often receive? Instead of viewing them as human beings, sports columnists seem to believe that every single teenage boy who dons a football uniform becomes a hero, no exceptions. No doubt the local sports media in Samdaman's home town depicted him as some kind of hero simply because he could play football well. After all, how Samdaman may have been treating others off the playing field is irrelevant. The sports media doesn't care about that. All that the sports media cares about is if a high-school's football team is having a winning season. That's all they really care about. If the sports media actually functioned as a journalistic institution and did investigative reporting, they would help clean up the corruption in the world of sports. Robert Lipsyte is the only sportswriter I've ever heard who has pointed out that the actions of some school athletes contributes to tensions between athletes and nonathletes on American high-school campuses. Later this week in this topic, I'll give a classic example of how the sports media failed to report a major scandal in college football. I mentioned this scandal in a previous topic last year, but I think that it may have been overlooked by most of the members.

HugeFanOfBadReligion wrote:Indeed, I can't possibly understand what the reasoning is behind letting jocks do whatever the hell they want. The closest reason (but definitely not a remotely good reason) I can imagine why they do it in a school is because if a school has good athletes, then it promotes the school's reputation, and at least in the case of my school and the other major school in my town, there is a huge rivalry going on between the two major high schools, mainly in athletics, and everyone in the school, including the school staff, want their school to crush the other school. Of course they don't want to punish one of the schools best athletes because they want him to play on all the sports teams so the school is superior to the other school (at least according to them). So basically, the school's staff is okay with kids getting tormented as long as the school gets a good reputation in athletics and beats the other school in the football game.

I heard that in the last football game that happened on Thursday that my school played in, one of the other school's players had his tibia completely shattered by one of our players, and had to have an ambulance come. Well, one of our school's coaches got it on tape, and apparently the coach is planning on playing the video for the school, and posting it on Youtube. How pathetic, a grown adult humiliates a kid probably less than half his age at another school by showing everyone a video of him getting seriously injured. And no one in the school is slightly against it.

Also, a couple days ago, one of the football players was trying to anger me by telling me about how the football team is going to celebrate their victory at some restaurant, then he claimed that there was going to be "groupies" there, so if I may translate this to as JIM would say it, he claimed that he would be "getting some tang". I told him I doubted that anyone on the football team would get laid at a restaurant, so he basically just said the most childish argument back "You're just jealous". I told him that I'm not jealous that he prances around grabbing a bunch of sweaty guys while wearing a purple jersey. He then said he was going to tell the whole football team I said that, and that he'd get them all to beat me up. Apparently, he couldn't do it himself when I said it to his face, so he needs his pathetic buddies to help him. I'm not worried though, maybe I should be, but I'm not. I don't even think anything will happen.

Sports build character, eh? I would ask anyone who mouths this trite baloney, is the jerk you've just referred to a shining example of character? I would have told the jerk that I don't believe in using girls, even if they want to use me. There is such a thing, after all, as decency. To exploit someone in such an intimate way -- someone whom you have no intention at all of making any sort of a commitment, someone whom you would discard just as you would an empty beer can -- is truly pathetic. Do you know what this really is? I'm going to possibly risk offending people. This sort of exploitative sex is nothing more than masturbating in a vagina.

Their lack of honour disgusts me to the core.

"Initiation"? Pffffft. PFFFFFT. You only beat somebody when they have done something absolutely wrong (i.e. disobeying orders and threatening a higher rank with a weapopn). And these people

a) Did not have the sense of duty to actually say who did it (even anonymously)
b) I am really not expecting the perpetrator to come out (because they are dishonourable maggots) but seriously.


And why is this person still continuing? After the beatings he got (apparantly for no good reason- but I still shall see) why is he investing his precious time playing for a team who doesn't give a damn for his well being?

The Imperialist wrote:And why is this person still continuing? After the beatings he got (apparantly for no good reason- but I still shall see) why is he investing his precious time playing for a team who doesn't give a damn for his well being?

I really honestly don't know. I don't have a clue about what is driving this guy to remain a part of a group that has harassed and even battered him. Perhaps he is trying to prove to them that he's a "real man" and that through their beatings and abuse, he will continue to persevere to prove his "worth" on the pitch and not let anything stray him from his cause? Like there's something wrong in abandoning a group of people who half-killed him? Who knows. Personally, if I was him, I'd be out of there immediately and would have tried to leave the school. I thought some of the stuff I had to put up with at school was bad but it suddenly seems comparatively mild. Contact sports... what do they do to people's minds? I'll tell you: they remove the compassion and care for others, and replace it with violence and physical dominion!

Best regards,
i_like_1981

If he is staying on because of "I will not be bullied out of what I am good at; I will stick to my own principles" bravo to him.

This is sickening. I hope these stupid jocks leave school, become unemployable and grossly obese by the time they are 25 and sit wallowing in pity about what great sportsmen they could have been, while the kid they hassled gets a PHD in Computer Science, lands a massively well paid job and a very expensive car and drives past these saddos, laughing at them, as they stumble home from the bar to their trailer homes. Also I should hope he becomes a black belt in karate, an ex jock challenges him to finish what started in the locker room, and floors the stupid jock.