The Current - Why some coaches still see hazing as a good thing

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

A new survey suggests many coaches still see hazing in sports as important for team building, despite high-profile incidents involving bullying and sexual assault. We talk to coaches and athletes working to change the idea that success in sport comes through suffering.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. There is a long tradition of hazing in sport, so much so that it's often considered part of the experience of being on a team, especially as a newcomer. Akeem Aliu was one of the first high-profile players to speak out about hazing in hockey. In 2005, when he was 16 years old, he stood up to hazing on his Ontario Hockey League team. I don't think any mom or dad wants to see their kid stripped down in a naked and being peed on and turned the heat up,

because that's a ritual to conform you to a team and essentially makes you part of the team. It just never made any sense. But even though I was hazed and I had my teeth knocked out, I was made out to be the villain and the bad person, the bad kid, the uncoachable kid. That same year, Darcy McKeown spoke out about initiation rituals for the football team at McGill University, rituals involving lots of alcohol, bullying, and sexual assault. I can't explain why people think this is team building, but it's not. And it really just creates a culture of bullying and, you know, it keeps crimes under the guise of the term hazing when they should be called out for what they are, assault. It's almost chalked up to boys will be boys or it's just kids messing about when and not really expressing the severity of these actions.

Cases like those and the sexual assaults at Toronto St. Michael's College School in 2018 make headlines. and the sexual assaults at Toronto St. Michael's College School in 2018 make headlines. But a new report reveals hazing at various levels of severity continues to be an issue in sport in this country. The Coaches Association of Ontario surveyed 1,000 coaches in more than 70 sports. It found there are varied understandings of what is and isn't hazing. And while many coaches are aware that it's happening on their teams, few know what to do about it. isn't hazing. And while many coaches are aware that it's happening on their teams, few know what to do about it. And perhaps most shockingly, the report also found that many coaches, some 62%, view various forms of hazing positively. Eric McLaughlin is a senior lead with the Coaches Association of Ontario and co-authored the report. Eric, good morning.

Good morning. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. Can you just start with a definition? I mentioned that hazing can be a number of different things. It can be extreme criminal behavior. It can be something that is perhaps more subtle, if I can put it that way as well. How do you define what hazing is? 20, 30 years has looked at it. It's an activity expected of someone joining a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses, or endangers that person. And that's also regardless of their willingness to participate. Why are we using the word hazing and not other words, as we just heard, like bullying or assault when we're talking about those activities? Yeah, good question. And I think that hazing has a spectrum, or I would just sort of look at it as and reframe people's mindset that it's about sort of not so positive activities that we're trying to create these team cultures. Hazing often can think when people think of hazing, which is when you see the report, they think of the extreme ends, which is true.

It does happen. And there is that spectrum of behavior. And I think what all of this is when we look at bullying or cyberbullying or hazing in general, they all have subtle nuances, but the end result is the same thing. It's unwanted behavior on the part of the system that's happening that we as a collective system, that's coaches, parents, and the organizations that all exist, have a better job to do in order to improve sport culture because sport matters so much. In your life, not just as a coach, but as an athlete, I mean, what is your experience

with hazing? Were you ever hazed? Yeah. So I was a swimmer growing up for about 15 years. And then I transitioned into a coach in my early 20s for 10 years. When I was a kid in my early teens, 13, 14, I remember having to wear a girl's bathing suit. It was a relay race that all the new boys in a particular group had to put on this girl's bathing suit, get up on the blocks. And it was in front of, I can't remember, 75, 100 people

and off you go. And that was very common. And I remember seeing that. I remember also in my later teen years having to do something called the elephant walk for no reason. And it was just merely made to humiliate and degrade you. And I think as I transitioned into coaching in my own world, I love sport and I love coaching because of what the positive aspects can give me and what it has given me in my life. And that's why when I became a coach, looking at, okay, just because it happened to me doesn't make it okay to make it happen to everybody else. How common is that, do you think? I mean, how common are those sorts of behaviors or more? When you speak with these thousand coaches and you take a look at sport right now in this country, how common is that? I think, well, you laid off the stat, you sort of set the stat off the beginning that 62% of coaches have a positive opinion of one of these varying degrees of hazing. What I have found in my experience, and even in the research, that the younger the sport, it starts off as what is often determined as gray area.

And then as it gets older, when it goes unaddressed, it can tend to turn to more extreme, like you're like off the top of the segment with Akeem Alou, who's been to our events, or I know we're going to have a special guest here later. But when we talk about those sort of instances, it goes unaddressed, usually at young ages. So when it seems innocent, like me just wearing a bathing suit, or giving me a nickname, but I don't really like it, or making young kids, for example, you know, all the new kids, you're all the water boys and girls. That's your job. You have to do it. Why? Well, because we all had to do it. Why? Well, that's just what happens. It's just new. You're new. That's what you have to do.

And so that it doesn't serve a purpose. The stats I mentioned that 62% of Ontario coaches view some form of hazing, at least one form of hazing positively. The other stat is that 32% of coaches view positively at least one form of extreme hazing that can lead to anything from physical or sexual assault, the consumption of alcohol or drugs, the consumption of some sort of vile concoction, vandalism, deprivation of sleep, food, or water. How do you understand that? What is going on there with coaches? What do they believe something like that accomplishes? I think when we look at that, that stat, and I think if you pair it with, when we look at the research, so six in 10 coaches who are also here in the study were also, many of them are athletes. That's how

most people coach. They continue from their own days. Six in 10 coaches experienced it themselves as athletes, a form of hazing when they were athletes. And now in turn, they become coaches. I think what it shows is, is that it's ingrained within us over decades of time and nobody stopped it. What is the belief? What is the understanding that that sort of behavior, that that kind of, I mean, if you're looking at the extreme, that is bullying, that is assault, that's worse than that. I mean, what is the belief that that is doing to a player or to the team spirit? mental and physical effects on people. And we as a collective need to do better to understand, not only understand, but also intervene, set appropriate standards, and ensure that those behaviors aren't continuing. What does it say? Well, I'll say this first to start. Studies like this have never actually been done yet before on asking coaches their opinions on what's happening. So what we have in front of us here with the Ontario Coaching Report is really a benchmark for us to work from. And so when people think of hazing, and you mentioned

off the top, a lot of people think of hazing is that it's just a thing for high performance sport or older or university or, you know, older teens and into your 20s. Things can happen at younger ages, and it can often start as young as 12 with certain varying degrees. And I think when we look at these frequency of behaviors and we see people's opinions of how they view it, at least positively, we have work to do as a collective system to change people's opinions and show them and continue to talk about it like you and I have the opportunity to do today. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Alison Forsyth, Canadian Olympic alpine skier, has coached AAA hockey. She has been a longtime advocate for safe sport in this country through the organization that she founded, Generation Safe. And she's with me in studio. Alison, good morning to you. Thanks for having me. What do you make of this report and what is revealed in this report when it comes to not just the prevalence of hazing, but how coaches themselves

who are asked their thoughts, how they feel about hazing? Yeah. So when we educate on safe sport, when I educate on safe sport, we talk a lot about the cultural normalization of maltreatment, meaning what Eric previously mentioned, and we call it cultural conditioning. If a coach was hazed or if a coach experienced harm as an athlete, they're very likely much the same in overall society to repeat that abuse. Why they do that is to normalize what happened to them. to normalize what happened to them. Also further, often coaches will endorse or like put in place maltreatment where it's to a lesser degree than what they experienced.

So what that means is basically they will justify that what they are doing or what the athletes are doing to each other is not actually abuse because it's not as bad as what happened to them. What does it look like? I mean, paint us a picture of what it actually looks like in sport. We've

heard a couple of examples from Eric, and I gave a couple of examples as well. What does hazing look like now? So hazing is masked as a tradition. It's also masked as team building, but more importantly, it is a toughen them up, earn your stripes approach to sport, which is a complete myth based on years and years of us, whether it's media or thinking that the only way to succeed in sport and be a high performance athlete is to experience pain and maltreatment. So what it actually looks like is athletes repeating the harm that they suffered, feeling that they need to. But more importantly, I do

re-assimilation education, which means I actually educate athletes after they've perpetrated hazing in order to allow them back into sport. So I have firsthand experience of athletes, even at a criminal level of hazing, telling me directly, well, this happened to me, therefore I felt I had to do it to someone else. is that this will build the team. This will strengthen the team. This will create something amongst all of us in the dressing room that is going to go out then and be stronger on the ice or on the basketball court or what have you. Yeah. And when I educate a lot of student athletes at our major universities around hazing, I simply ask them why. Why do you feel, where is it coming from that you feel that you have to treat rookies as an example poorly in order to have a strong team? I stress that rookies should be treated with kindness, respect, and mentorship, but we're completely backwards right now, where we're actually treating rookies or new members of the team as the guinea pigs or the scapegoats for all of our bad behavior. You surprised that 62% of coaches in the province of Ontario would admit that they believe in 2024 that hazing is something positive for their team?

Well, I was not surprised. I mean, when I read the report, I thought I was reading it wrong at first. So I guess I was, when I read the report, I was looking at a column that said hazing can have positive attributes. And when I saw the percentage, it made me really recognize that the coaches were being honest, which I think is really important, that the coaches were accurately describing what they felt. But the only thing that did not surprise me with the amount of education I do with coaches is that ingrained feeling that sport has to be hard, that you have to treat athletes a certain way in order to win. And that comes right back to the win at all costs model that sport has been functioning on, that they get stuck thinking, well, this is what it takes to win, therefore we must do it. One of the things when we have these conversations that we will hear back from people in sport is you're outside the dressing room, you're outside the culture,

you have no idea what you're talking about. You're some broadcaster, journalist who's not playing hockey, who's not in that space. What do you make of that response to people raising issues of the culture of sport? I hear it all the time. You hear it all the time. Yeah.

Well, Alison, that's just sport. Alison, that's just hockey. Alison, that's just hockey. You don't understand. And my job is to go into organizations and provide this type of education. So you have to break down the normalization. And also, I have to provide coaches an opportunity to practice forgiveness on themselves. I have many coaches acknowledge that they've, you know, they hazed as athletes, that they want, you know, they've gone back and apologized for it. So ultimately, we just need to've gone back and apologized for it.

So ultimately, we just need to break the cycle of a repeated pattern. And there is no such thing as that's just sport. I will often say to coaches, think about school. Think about the way children are talked to by their teachers. Would a child be, would it be acceptable for a child to be yelled and cursed at by a teacher for getting 8 out of 10 on a math test? Right? for a child to be yelled and cursed at by a teacher for getting eight out of 10 on a math test, right? So in hockey, as an example, coaches will yell and berate children for poor playing, yet that is never allowed in other sectors of society. So to be honest, they're just wrong. It sounds like an obvious question, but what's the, and I ask you this because you have been in this world and in talking about safe sport for a long time, what is the long-term impact

of that kind of behavior? Trauma. You know, I was abused myself sexually in sport, which resulted in complex PTSD amongst many other mental health challenges. And we need to understand what psychological safety is. It's a term that needs to be equated directly with physical safety in sport. No one questions my children playing hockey, wearing a helmet. Why do we still question whether or not my children should treat each other a certain way or be treated a certain way? At the end of the day, when I educate, we know way more about trauma now. We know way more about harm and we need to shift. And the example I would use with coaches most often is concussions. So as an alpine skier, I hit my head a lot going down the mountain very quickly. I don't go back to 1998 and say to my coach, you should have known I had a concussion. So when we know better, we do better. That's the reality of society and sport.

And we know better now. We know what harm is. We know what trauma causes as long-term detrimental effects and coping mechanisms that we see in society. And we just need to acknowledge that whether we did it or it happened to us, it's wrong and make a concerted choice to shift. Eric McLaughlin, when we go back to those stats, the executive director of your organization, when I talked about the 62% of Ontario coaches who view positively at least one form of hazing, your executive director said, how is that number not zero? How is that number not zero? I think to Allison's point, as she just alluded to, that as we're moving towards the system,

the culture of understanding that, yes, we have to understand where people are coming from in order to now accept what we see. And then, but we can't just accept and sit idly by. And that's the key. We have something here in front of us as a system and as a group of people helping educate coaches and parents and the organizations that be that that number eventually we're going to work down. And that is our, and that is, that is all of our efforts. You know, we're so proud to have someone like Alison help champion this and work with her

in our events and attributes and education awareness campaigns. How is that number not zero? We want it to be zero, as Allison alluded to. How can it not be? It has to be zero at some point. Why do we accept that these extreme behaviors, if I use that as an example, you know, here are ever going to be more than zero when we have to accept that pushing people to what we see as extreme limits is part of sport and it isn't. And whether it's Allison speaking about it or myself or Akima Liu off the top of the segment, we all have several experiences here that we need to continue to voice and that we need to continue to push forward that just because it happened to you doesn't make it okay. We're going to treat them with kindness, as Allison alluded to, but then also move forward, that there is a path here to understanding that these things

are not okay anymore. But there have been efforts for years at stopping hazing. There have been zero tolerance policies. There have been stories that have made the headlines that have shocked people across this country. What have we got? We broadly have got, what have we got? We broadly have got, what have we got wrong in terms of not, I mean, the numbers might be coming down, but it's still

62% is a high number. Totally agreed. A hundred percent. I think one of the things, when we look at also the report data, you know, half, less than half of the organizations have a policy. Now policy only goes one way, right? That's only, that's, that's not the end all be all. have a policy. Now, policy only goes one way, right? That's not the end-all be-all. But it is important to understand that, you know, we have these systems and checks in places. Yep, a policy is one piece. What sort of education and awareness are you giving them as a second piece? Where can people go to voice their complaints and have that awareness training? And so it's a step. It's a continuous ladder towards moving towards those things. But if less than half the organizations have a policy, and what, again, this data shows us,

is that people still have no idea about some of these behaviors that they constitute as gray, or even in the comments that I look at on social media. Yes, I do go through them. Why? Because I'm interested in knowing what people are talking about. And the number one comment always is, it just toughens people up. You said, Alison, something really interesting about this winner-take-all kind of mentality in sport. And we've talked about that before with sport ministers and what have you. In addition to being an Olympian and an athlete, you're also a

coach, right? And so what is, I read about this, what is this question that you ask parents at the beginning of the season? What would you like your child to get out of the season that has nothing to do with winning? And what's the response of the parents? Silence for a little bit. Similar to how in the report we asked coaches what are the positive values of sport, and they couldn't name them unless they were prompted. So we have to get parents specifically, especially in in a high performance model of sport out of that. Well, I just want my child to make it because there is a myth again, that when you make it, AKA make the NHL or myself, you know, get to be the best in the world at what you do,

that you're automatically happy, healthy, kind, and respectful. At the end of the day, you're raising a child. You're not raising an athlete. And chances are that I had a daughter who played hockey and was assigned in the dressing room, or in the clubhouse, and it said, your child is probably not going to make it to the NHL. The referees aren't paid.

There's no video review. This is a game, and enjoy the game. Is that kind of what you need? I mean, I'm not naive to think there's a lot of money that's involved in amateur sport and high-performance sport, but how do you get it back to understanding that this is sport, that this is about more than just winning? Well, part of it is if you, I mean, I do many, many intakes with athletes who have made it and have suffered major consequences, whether that's from maltreatment. But the number one

thing I would say to parents that are listening is just to remind them that your child is very likely not going to make it. And if they don't make it and you put that pressure on them or that's the only goal for your child in sport, they will very likely end up feeling like they incredibly disappointed you. That can lead to its own mental health challenges for your child. It's very true, if not a bit punny to say that what you get out of sport is the journey. I know that firsthand. It's the work ethic. It's the treating teammates right. It's showing respect for your coaches. It's loving the game. These are all things that when sport is over, which is ultimately over for most of us until our pickleball days come in play, we need to recognize that those are the true values that human beings take away from sport. Eric, we're just about out of time. Very briefly, are you, having done this survey and having heard

from coaches, honestly, which is really important, are you confident that talking about this will actually change how we see safe sport? There are people volunteer to coach sport for any number of great reasons and put themselves into the community for any number of great reasons and, and put themselves into the community for a number of great reasons. Are you confident that those reasons will win out? Absolutely. I think when you look at, again, looking at data, I'm a numbers guy. I like data, but people coach for the right reasons. People, parents do put their kids in for the right reasons, right? People are inherently doing things for the right positive reasons. They need to be guided down the yellow brick road of where to go. And that's in the end, that's where that needs to happen. Allison, you've been doing this work for 25 years and longer. Are we moving in the right

direction, do you think, to make sports safe for all? You know, we are in a place of awareness and movement. And I would say even before the Hockey Canada case broke, you know, a few years ago, most, you know, the public in Canada didn't even know what the term safe sport was. So we're in awareness and we're moving slowly. But it's going to take a lot of people's internal work to order to understand that they can't re-perpetrate the system, that they have to shift the system. It's going to take leadership and organizations and everyone to be on board. Awesome. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And Eric, thank you. Thank you. Eric McLaughlin is a senior lead with the Coaches Association of Ontario. Alison Forsyth is an Olympian, founder of Generation Safe. Your thoughts on hazing in sport. As a coach, an athlete, or a parent, why does it still exist? And what are we doing to try to tackle it?

You can email us, thecurrent at cbc.ca. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.