HS Softball Players Get “Drink Soda From a Shoe” Treatment: Can We Quit Hazing Now?

Have you ever wanted to drink a soda out of a shoe? No? Well, thank your lucky stars you don’t play softball at South Tahoe High:

⇥A California high school girl’s softball coach has apologized for requiring eight players who struck out during a recent game to drink soda pop out of a team member’s shoe, a school district official said.⇥⇥⇥The South Tahoe High School varsity players drank the soda at a team slumber party on May 1, hours after a game against Wooster High School of Reno, Nev.⇥⇥

⇥⇥“It was meant as a joke, and obviously it went too far,” Lake Tahoe Unified School District superintendent James Tarwater said.⇥⇥

⇥⇥...⇥⇥

⇥⇥“People learn from mistakes,” Tarwater said. “She does a good job pulling the team together, morale-wise and support-wise.”⇥⇥

Maybe I’m odd for thinking this, but I believe going too far for a coach usually stops somewhere before making players drink soda from a shoe at a slumber party. The best (well, not best) part of all of this: It’s very possible that Anneliese Neitling, the coach whose bright idea this was, keeps her job.Apparently, in Nevada, hazing is a misdemeanor offense “if there isn’t substantial bodily harm.” So if Neitling had made one player drink from a shoe and hit someone else with it, she might end up getting charged with ... a gross misdemeanor. (Nice laws, Nevada.) And, obviously, with her superintendent couching his reaction in “People learn from mistakes,” it doesn’t sound like there’s a mob with pitchforks at her door.

There probably shouldn’t be, to be honest. This is a mistake that can be learned from and never repeated.

But, just maybe, could we learn something from Neitling’s case before I have to write something else about hazing?

You don’t have to read too many Drew Magary-curated accounts (NSFW language) of the jerks in coaching to suspect that for every case of bizarre hazing like this one, there are probably four that go unreported and a few that just don’t read as hazing to kids and adolescents who look up to and trust their coaches. Most of the ones Deadspin runs are much worse than what Neitling allegedly did.But the trust between a coach and a player gets abused in far more serious fashion than a shoe soda or a story that can be told to a sports blog for giggles. Any abuse of power by a coach, justified as a means of instilling discipline and preparing charges for the real world or not, is troubling, because it normalizes abuse of power.

After all, how did those coaches learn to do that in the first place? If coaches who are caught are expected to learn from their mistakes, what about the ones who don’t get caught? And how can we be sure coaches who get slaps on the wrist for this sort of stuff don’t run back to their teams, roll their eyes, and use “They just don’t understand or respect us or what we do!” as a rallying cry and a self-absolution?

The idea that coaches cannot motivate, teach, or train players without some sort of humiliation is depressing. But if coaches could maybe take one instance of that humiliation and turn it into a lesson that there are people who will abuse power in this world, there is recourse against that abuse, and there are people who will happily treat you as, y’know, functioning human beings with brains and rights and feelings?

That would be great coaching.

(HT: Bob’s Blitz.)

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