Football Hazing Prompts Changes at Glendale High

School administrators are tightening supervision of after-school sports, revising athletic guidelines and remodeling a football locker room after eight Glendale High School football players were suspended last month for a pattern of hazing team members.

The eight boys, including several top starters, pinned younger players on the locker room floor and poked them in the buttocks with sawed-off broom handles and a mini-baseball bat, school and police officials said. The incidents, which the players called “bat-tizing,” had been going on for several years and were considered an initiation to the varsity squad of the Dynamiters football team, players said.

The players were suspended for five days and ordered to perform community service.

Glendale Unified School District administrators say they learned of the locker room hazing on March 1, when an after-school tutor overheard two freshmen talking about several recent incidents.

No one was seriously hurt, and the broom handles and bat never went inside any of the boys’ bodies, said Glendale Police Sgt. Rick Young. After talking to more than 20 players, detectives closed the case March 16 without pressing charges. They said the incidents were just “horseplay.”

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A week later, however, football head coach Pete Smolin abruptly resigned. He said he wasn’t aware that hazing was occurring, and that the disclosure wasn’t a “major part” of his decision to quit. He declined to elaborate.

Glendale Board of Education members say they were shocked to learn of the locker room antics.

“This is very humiliating, disgusting, degrading behavior,” board member Chuck Sambar said.

In the hallways of the 3,500-student school, the football hazing continues to be the talk of the campus.

“You keep hearing more and more details,” said Aaron Moe, a senior. “I mean, come on, what those guys were doing was pretty odd.”

It’s not clear when the hazing tradition began, but some of the boys have said it dates back to the 1980s. One of the suspended players said names of long-gone alumni are scribbled in magic marker on the 3-foot-long wooden broom handles and mini-bat confiscated by police.

The prodding was considered a rite of passage and just a game, the suspended player said. When an underclass player strayed into the varsity part of the football locker room, the older boys would chase him with broom handles, wrestle him to the floor and poke him, the student said.

The player holding the broom handle or bat called himself the “pope” or the “archbishop,” he added.

“We’d say: ‘Here’s comes the pope. Time for bat-tizing. Watch out!’ ” said the suspended boy, whose name was withheld because of his age.

One sophomore said that when his turn came he didn’t run but instead stood still for a few prods before the other boys let him go.

“I was laughing,” the sophomore said.

The suspended boy said he and his friends never gave much thought to what they were doing.

“It was nothing sexual, even though that’s what everybody asked us after we got caught,” he said. “We were just doing what had been done to us.”

Administrators say the tutor who learned of the hazing contacted Glendale High co-principals Michael Livingston and Gloria Vasquez. The principals said they immediately called police and launched their own investigation.

None of the younger boys questioned by police said he had been hurt or even threatened, said Sgt. Young, and as a result there were no grounds for criminal charges.

“It was just goofing around, what we call horseplay,” Young said.

But the principals concluded the eight boys--four juniors, two seniors and two sophomores--had overstepped the line and endangered other students. All eight admitted to poking other players starting last fall and continuing through the off-season weightlifting program this winter, Vasquez said. Broom handles and a bat were found in the lockers of three boys.

In addition to being suspended for five days, the eight players were ordered to attend counseling sessions and perform 40 hours of community service, preferably at a battered women’s or child abuse shelter, Vasquez said.

School administrators said the lack of locker room supervision was a problem. There was no coach specifically assigned to watch over the boys before and after practice. But under new rules, a coach or teacher will be assigned to every locker room in the district, period by period, said Donald Empey, deputy superintendent for the Glendale Unified School District.

Another change will be an expanded athletic code of conduct. All high school athletes are required to sign a code saying they won’t use drugs or drink or hurt other people. Starting next year, the districtwide code will explicitly prohibit hazing, defined as intimidating or disciplining younger members of a team.

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The hazing incidents have also prompted the school to remodel the football locker room and rearrange the lockers so the area can be better supervised, Livingston said.

In resigning as head coach, Smolin said he felt “it was time to go,” citing his 9-20 record at Glendale High.

Smolin, a former college running back, will stay on at Glendale High as a physical education teacher.

Smolin said he was stunned to learn that his team had a tradition of broom-handle hazing.

“These kids are not bullies at all,” Smolin said. “If I had caught them doing that stuff, I would have run them and run them until they were so tired they wouldn’t have had the energy to even think about picking up a broom handle.”