Rich Buzzell has been the athletic director at Marshwood High for 22 years. He says creating a safe environment for students is his No. 1 priority. “If we’re not doing that, we’re not doing our jobs,” he said. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

Like many high school athletic directors, Rich Buzzell at Marshwood takes steps each year to educate student-athletes and coaches on the dangers of hazing.

Athletes sign that they’ve read the student handbook. Parents are brought in to discuss school rules. Last fall, Buzzell – who is in his 22nd year – brought in a speaker to talk to his student-athletes about what constitutes a good teammate.

“There are probably a lot of ADs in the state that were pretty nervous after the Brunswick situation,” he said. “When that came to light, we really probably paid even closer attention to how we were doing things, and making sure our people were properly schooled in the area of ‘Hey, let’s cut out anything that could even be misconstrued as hazing.’

“The No. 1 creed for all of us is to make sure the kids are in a safe environment. That’s the No. 1 thing. If we’re not doing that, we’re not doing our jobs.”

Still, incidents happen. The latest involves the Lisbon High football team, whose season is on hold in the wake of police and internal hazing investigations. Seven players were removed from the program, and the team has forfeited two games, putting the rest of its season in jeopardy.

That follows a hazing incident involving the Brunswick football team three years ago, which made national headlines, and resulted in the firing of the head coach and the cancellation of the season.

Several athletic directors contacted by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram this week point to a variety of anti-hazing measures they say help educate coaches, staff and students.

But some hazing experts, like University of Maine professor Elizabeth Allan, the founder of the research group StopHazing, say more can be done.

“Schools are doing more than ever before to educate about it,” she said, “but we still have a long way to go. … It’s easy to say ‘Oh, that’s not a problem here at our school.’ However, the research shows that it’s far more pervasive than people typically think.”

POLICIES IN PLACE

The Maine Principals’ Association does not have an anti-hazing policy, instead leaving it to the schools to shape their own. The MPA does require coaches to view the National Federation of State High School Associations’ “Protecting the Students from Abuse” video. Furthermore, state law requires school boards to have an anti-hazing policy.

At Gorham, hazing prohibitions are included in the school committee policy, student handbook and an athletic code of conduct that student-athletes are required to sign. Athletic Director Tim Spear said he also holds check-ins with his coaches before each season, and hazing is always a pressing subject.

“That is definitely one of the topics we hit on, and make sure everybody is clear that it’s not something that’s permitted here or anywhere in our programs,” he said. “We also try to meet with our captains of our athletic programs. It’s one of those pieces that’s important to talk about.”

Football equipment is piled in a shed at Lisbon High School on Wednesday. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

At Messalonskee in Oakland, which implemented its hazing policy in 2009, athletes and coaches are given a sheet that defines hazing and explains how it hurts the bond of a team. They must sign the sheet to acknowledge they understand the ramifications. Athletic Director Chad Foye said that practice was in place when he arrived in 2018.

“I think coaches are more cognizant of it,” he said. “As time has gone on and these events occur, people want to make sure it doesn’t happen here, or it doesn’t happen everywhere. … You don’t want it to happen where you work. You don’t want it to happen on your teams and you don’t want it to be part of your culture.”

Messalonskee senior captain Drake Brunelle said hazing investigations are wake-up calls.

“(They’ve) got to be,” he said. “I’ve heard many stories of places, maybe not now, but in the past. A program gets killed immediately. I think everybody is taking notice of that. … We’ve seen what’s happened with Lisbon and Brunswick in the past. We take that very seriously. You’ve got to be accepting of the young guys. You don’t want – as a senior, especially – you don’t want a program to get shut down for two years and that be your legacy.”

Administrators know more than a policy is needed. Biddeford Athletic Director Dennis Walton developed a PowerPoint presentation on the school’s code of conduct, which includes sections defining hazing. He played it for the entire school last year. He’s also made it available to his coaches to show players before their seasons.

“We all have policy. But if you ask any high school athlete how familiar they are with policy, they’re probably going to tell you they’re not very much so,” Walton said. “(But) you’d be hard-pressed if you were to ask a student-athlete here about the code of conduct that they wouldn’t be familiar with it. … That’s where I would say it’s more effectively covered.”

STEPS TO TAKE

Allan, the UMaine professor and founder of StopHazing, published a national study of hazing in college in 2008. It showed that 47% of students experienced a form of hazing in high school.

She said steps schools could take include communicating the policy, including what constitutes hazing and how it will be enforced; making sure coaches are trained and educated on what to look for; training people on how to intervene with a situation they see unfolding and letting kids know how they can feel safe while alerting supervisors; and stressing how school spirit can exist without hazing.

In 2019, a Marquette Sports Law Review study mentioned that of 61,258 college athletes surveyed, 12% said they were hazed, but 80% said they experienced hazing rituals as part of their team initiation. According to Hank Nuwer, who has authored two books on hazing and also tracks deaths caused by hazing rituals, there have been over 100 fatalities since 2000.

Allan said while hazing’s physical dangers are publicized, the mental toll can be just as damaging.

“There’s the emotional and psychological trauma that can happen with hazing, sometimes leaving lifelong scars,” she said. “(The) PTSD, anxiety, stress, depression that manifest sometimes years later because of the trauma experienced from hazing.

“And those are impacts on an individual. It’s important to remember that there are these ripple effects where the families are impacted, and friends as well as the group and the team. We’ve seen how seasons can be canceled, people can be fired.”

Dr. Lisa Stephen, a psychologist and professional coach specializing in helping parents prepare for the risks and challenges of college years, said hazing can cover a broad range of acts and seems, on the surface, to be innocuous.

The front of Lisbon High School on Route 196. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

“These seemingly benign … acts have far-reaching effects and long-lasting effects into your future,” she said. “It’s one thing to be asked to carry the water bottles out. It’s another thing to be degraded, humiliated, ashamed, trapped, mortified, frightened in that seemingly benign act.

“Hazing is always, always, always dangerous and harmful. There’s no such thing as a hazing act that produces positive effects, makes you more of a team player, all of that.”

Dr. Jason Meriwether, whose book “Hazing in College Athletics: Combating Destructive Practices and Hidden Harms” is coming out soon, said sports hazing stems from power dynamics, a desire to continue traditions and a lack of awareness that what they’re doing is harmful.

“(They think) ‘this is my tradition, and it’s (worth) the risk,’ until it goes wrong. Or, ‘nothing’s going to go wrong because it happened to me,’ ” he said. “You think it’s just good fun, boys will be boys, it’s what you do to earn your place on the team. … Well, didn’t you earn your spot when you worked out all through middle school and went to AAU camps, and you trained and you watched video? Didn’t you earn your spot when you went through conditioning and training and tryouts and made the team?”

MOVING FORWARD

Jason Fuller, the Lewiston athletic director, doesn’t need a reminder on how to approach hazing.

“I’ve been an AD for 20 years, and this is something we’ve talked about for 20 years,” he said. “It’s something that I take a lot of pride to address because I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand the need to haze someone. … We’re supposed to be a community that is working together, and hazing does nothing to enforce those values.”

Fuller talks about hazing in preseason meetings with coaches (“It’s a priority for us,” he said), and goes over supervising the locker room and how seemingly mundane actions like making one class carry water bottles or pads is still a form of hazing.

Fuller also said that in an effort to break down the power dynamic that fuels hazing, several Lewiston teams use a captains council that gives freshmen and sophomores a say in picking the captains. Those captains then meet with coaches regularly.

Marswhood High Athletic Director Rich Buzzell at the South Berwick school on Thursday. Buzzell, who has been at Marshwood for 22 years, brought in an outside speaker last year to talk to students about what it means to be a good teammate. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

“We want to make sure our kids know they’re equals,” he said. “We want to allow every class to have a voice.”

Educating the players is as important as educating the coaches. At South Portland, coaches are required to take the NFHS Bullying, Hazing and Inappropriate Behavior course, but the school also does training for captains each season that includes a section on hazing, and a social worker and school resource officer sit in on the training to clear up gray areas.

“I think that when they had the incident at Brunswick, it was kind of brought back to light and made more of an emphasis in the state of Maine,” South Portland AD Todd Livingston said.

Still, there’s fear that for all the steps schools take to prevent hazing, one bad choice could still happen.

“At the end of the day, high school-age student-athletes make poor decisions,” Livingston said. “Despite all the education that you provide them, those types of things are still going to happen, unfortunately.”

Administrators know how serious the subject has become. It’s why Keith Ryan, the athletic director at Oxford Hills, meets with coaches every preseason to go over the code of conduct and proper supervision of their athletes.

“It’s got to be a priority because it’s putting these programs in jeopardy of existing,” he said. “It puts an unfortunate tag on their school system. … We want to give kids independence, but at the same time they still need the structure and they still need the guidance.”

There’s hope that the Lisbon incident can provide another learning opportunity.

“Unfortunately it’s just another example that I get to point to,” Ryan said. “Programs need to be monitoring themselves. Coaches need to be aware, and not be thinking ‘it’s not going to happen here because I don’t want it to.'”

Central Maine sports writer Dave Dyer contributed to this report.