Creswell coach fired after report of hazing

CRESWELL — Longtime Creswell High School boys soccer coach Thomas Carroll has been fired in the wake of a hazing and harassment incident on the team bus last week.

Creswell High School Principal Gary Mounce confirmed Saturday that he terminated the school district’s contract with Carroll, who is not a district employee but has coached boys soccer either as the head coach or an assistant coach for the past dozen years.

Mounce also removed Carroll’s volunteer assistant, Juan Ayala.

Earlier in the week, Mounce disciplined four students involved in the incident. Mounce suspended the players for at least two league games, including Saturday’s game in Creswell against Rogue River High School. The Bulldogs won the game to move their league-best record to 5-0 in the Special District 3 league.

“We’re endeavoring to keep everybody safe and run a good athletic program and a good school environment,” Mounce said. “We felt it was in everyone’s best interest to make a change.”

Carroll did not respond Saturday to a phone request for comment.

A week ago, while the boys soccer team was returning from a match against Illinois Valley High School in Cave Junction, older students grabbed younger students and yanked down their shorts. Mounce concluded last week that at least two boys had their shorts yanked down and that two or three other boys were fearful that they would get the same treatment.

“The upperclassmen targeted freshmen and the new players, pulling them under a blanket, pinning them down and trying to strip off their shorts,” one of the players’ parents wrote in an anonymous e-mail to The Register-Guard last week.

It was the second time in a year that soccer team members were disciplined for harassing other players. A similar incident happened during the fall 2010 soccer season.

Although no players were physically hurt, the fact that it’s the second time a hazing incident has happened on Carroll’s watch in a year is evidence that a change needed to be made, another parent, who asked not to be identified for fear her son would be subjected to ridicule, said on Saturday.

“The whole situation has been really unfortunate,” the parent said in a phone interview. “I wish that it hadn’t have happened, but I hope it’s the beginning of a better future and a better situation for the players.”

Last Monday, an anonymous caller asked the Lane County Sheriff’s Office to investigate, but the law enforcement agency left it to the school district to look into the matter.

Not surprisingly, the incident has been the talk of the town the past week. Mounce said he has heard from several worried parents. “They were concerned about the program, about the safety of their sons and retaliation from other players,” he said.

On Saturday, the boys soccer team played under the direction of the interim coach, Tony Romero, Mounce said.

A statewide anti-bullying law, passed by the Legislature in 2009, requires school districts to have policies in place to deal with allegations of hazing, harassment and bullying. Creswell district Superintendent Todd Hamilton confirmed last week that Creswell has such policies, adopted by the school board last year.

The district prohibits hazing, harassment and bullying, as well as retaliation against students who report such behavior. Students who bully, harass or haze other students will be disciplined and may be kicked out of school, the policy says.

The actions that fall under hazing, harassment and bullying include physically harming a student or damaging a student’s property, knowingly placing a student in reasonable fear of physical harm and creating a hostile educational environment through interfering with a student’s psychological well-being.

According to a 2010 Associated Press story, two University of Maine College of Education and Human Development professors, Elizabeth Allan and Mary Madden, concluded in a hazing survey of college freshmen that 47 percent were hazed in high school.

Allan and Madden found the highest rates of hazing among members of sports teams (also 47 percent), ROTC (46 percent), and bands and performing arts organizations (34 percent). The average for other school organizations was 20 percent, the researchers reported.

Students are susceptible to getting swept up in group activities and doing things they might not otherwise do, Allan and Madden said in releasing the study.

“It’s just an overall lack of supervision and accountability,” the Creswell parent who was interviewed Saturday said. “The players can do things without consequences under (Carroll).”

The incident has divided the community and divided the parents of the players, some backing Carroll, others believing he needed to go, she said. And everyone has been trying to figure out who “tattled,” she added.

“It doesn’t matter,” the parent said. “It needed to happen,” she said of the coaches being terminated.