Hazing in sports has been a regular form of communication for years now. Physical, verbal, and even sexual abuse have all been requirements to become part of the “team”. High school sports (especially football) have been notorious for these horrible events and it wasn't long ago when these actions went along without consequences.
Light has been reaching the darkest shadows of hazing within the last decade. In 2011, a basketball team was punished for it’s horrible hazing game called “wet biscuit” that was enforced by the team leaders. Not much later a football team taped a player to the field goal post and kicked soccer balls at his head. Even kids on a soccer team were faced with rape charges after a sleepaway event at a cabin where the kids even signed an anti-hazing form before they arrived.
The National Hazing Prevention Week has been reaching to take consequences for hazing actions a step further. It’s not only the kids that might be held responsible, but parents, coaches, school directors or even the school as a whole if they knew these actions were going on and did nothing to stop it.
Leadership in sports is a critical role for success and team unity. The power that leadership gives to those few individuals at such a young age is, scary, to say the least. Maturity is huge, and being a teenager means that there’s not enough of it to go around. Schools and universities should continue making strict policies on hazing and abolish it all together. Sports was not created to scar young athletes for the rest of their lives. There are to many positive possibilities that sports can bring to kids lives than to let it be tainted by the actions of a few, immature hazers.
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