Napa High football program can't shake off effects of hazing incident

There is a new head coach, a starkly diminished roster and a mass of lingering resentment in the wake of a hazing scandal that nearly brought down the program.|

The Napa High School varsity football team is back in action, popping pads and preparing for another season. But after months of rumor, finger-pointing and uncertainty, little seems normal on the practice field off of Marin Street.

There is a new head coach, a starkly diminished roster and a mass of lingering resentment in the wake of a hazing scandal that nearly brought down the program.

So much has happened since I first wrote about this topic back in early April. So much.

For one thing, Napa High football almost went away. On May 18, principal Annie Petrie emailed a letter to parents explaining that the school had made offers to six candidates for the position of varsity head coach, an opening created when former coach Troy Mott resigned in protest over increased involvement by Napa Valley Unified School District in hiring assistant coaches. All six candidates declined.

'In order to meet the safety, conditioning, and training needs, as well as the need to provide academic options, we have determined that the last practical date for the coaching staff to be in place to be June 15th,' Petrie wrote.

Where some saw tragedy in the making, others sensed opportunity. During this suspended state, some of Napa High's more gifted varsity seniors found flyers in their mailboxes, apparently left by a supporter of American Canyon High School to the south.

'All we want to say is do you want to join a rival program that is still rebuilding, still learning to win?' the mailer read, referring to Vintage High in Napa. 'Or, in your senior year do you want to play on a team that is competing for a Section Championship? If we added someone with your tremendous talent to an already extremely FAST and talented team we would be a force to be reckon (sic) with.'

Below the text was a photograph of a championship ring overlaid by the numbers '42-14.' That was the score by which American Canyon defeated Vintage last season.

Napa families braced for the loss of football. Many of them were outraged. Then, on May 23, Mott gave in to his loyalties and offered to return in sort of a consulting role. Many of his former assistants quickly fell in line, and the season was saved. The new coach is Jesus 'Chuy' Martinez, who previously ran the JV team.

Meanwhile, the past eight months have marked a steady flow of accusations, meetings, hearings, negotiations, decisions and appeals for accusers and accused, for school administrators, school district officials, Napa County School Board trustees and Napa Police Department investigators.

The process has been drawn out, messy and frequently arbitrary, and virtually no one is satisfied with it.

Most of the hazing victims have transferred out of Napa High. For the accused, the fallout has been mixed. At least one, a kid with a documented learning disability, was allowed to return to school almost immediately last winter. According to district superintendent Patrick Sweeney, whom I spoke with by phone several weeks ago, his board suspended nine students and eventually expelled five of them. The county board later overturned three of the expulsions. Some of the disciplined students have transferred out of NHS, though for some reason the district denied the transfer request of at least one boy who sought to leave the district.

Even those kids who were reinstated during the spring semester lost ground. I spoke to a Napa High parent (his son played football but has no ties to the hazing case) who became an advocate for two of the accused because he believed the boys — both Latinos and sons of immigrants — weren't being adequately represented. He described one student who foundered in independent study during his expulsion, receiving Fs and incompletes. He is still struggling to catch up.

This advocate told me he and his wife laid out about $25,000 on legal fees to defend the students.

'Best money I've ever spent,' he added.

I'm sure Sweeney and other members of the school board would dispute them, but parents I spoke to offered a litany of complaints about the way the process was handled. I heard that Spanish-speaking parents weren't provided with translators or with documents in their native language, that one student's forms were signed by an older sister rather than a parent, that people received docs that mistakenly included the names of minors who should have remained anonymous.

I personally read a statement made by an alleged victim, composed in choppy language and filled with typos, and another statement from the same student filed a few weeks later, this one in crisp, perfect English.

Predictably, things got ugly. Parents directed hateful messages at Petrie and Sweeney, and at least one family brought suit against another student for false accusation.

The Napa County District Attorney's office eventually charged six students with crimes. Its investigation, which proceeded parallel to the district's, remains open, though no one expects additional charges.

To get a better idea of how this public skirmish affected families, I sat down with the parents of one of the accused, under the watchful eye of their lawyer.

Before I continue, I want to be clear about one thing. There is a gaping hole in my knowledge of these events, because I don't know the answer to the most important question. I don't know what happened in the Napa High locker room last Halloween.

I have seen an incident report prepared by the Napa High administration, and it reads, in part: 'When (Assistant Principal Kate) Gauger asked him what he was talking about, the student told her that players on the football team would stick fingers in freshman players' butts, and that 'a kid came up behind me and put his finger in my butt and then pushed me down and finished.''

These facts are disputed. Some football players insist that any touching was done on the outside of the victims' practice pants. This may be a trite distinction to the kids who were hazed, pushed around and humiliated. But it would seem to affect the proportionality of the punishment.

In any case, the two parents I interviewed say the distinction is irrelevant in their son's case, because he wasn't involved. They insist he was falsely accused. I take no stance on this claim. I simply don't know if it's true. But I have a good idea of what happened to their son — let's call him Player X — after the situation blew up.

The week after Thanksgiving 2016, he and a number of other football players were interviewed at the high school by district representatives. But things remained quiet through winter break, and the family figured it would blow over. Instead, they were instructed to appear at the district office at 8 a.m. the Monday after break ended.

Player X was suspended on the spot. His parents describe him as 'stunned, upset, angry.' He stormed out of the meeting. The district would subsequently extend his suspension.

Player X's parents were most concerned with the possibility of juvenile criminal proceedings against their son. So they signed an agreement accepting a 'suspended expulsion' and other restrictions. Player X admitted no wrongdoing or liability. And if he does not violate the agreement, the expulsion will be expunged from his record.

But he would not return to class before the fall semester. Thus began Player X's five-month banishment from high school.

He's a good student, and he labored hard to keep up with his studies as teachers sent homework and tests. He got a part-time job, worked out to stay in shape, spent a lot of hours with his girlfriend and even left town for three weeks for an internship with a relative in cyber-security. But he knew what he was missing, and his mood — and relationships with family members — suffered.

'He's been very stoic and internal,' X's mother said. 'He tries his hardest to keep it all together, but he's not cognitively in a place where he's operating from a place of safety or trust.'

His father was more to the point: 'I can say right now, he suffers from PTSD.'
Victims of the bullying were offered mental health support by the district. The accused, not so much. Perhaps they should have been. Two people I spoke to claimed that one of the alleged hazers, distraught over being kicked off the team, attempted suicide at one point.

X's parents spoke to me because they (and their attorney) are convinced the school district botched the investigation and expulsion process. On more than one occasion, they say, board members or district lawyers refused to provide documents such as witness statements, making it almost impossible to respond.

'Instead of innocent until proven guilty, it was just the opposite,' X's father said. 'He was assumed guilty until proven innocent.'

One thing particularly galls X's parents. They note that the district had a contract with a restorative justice educator, and a good one, named Eric Butler. But Butler wasn't brought in to work with the football program until May. And even then, the circle didn't include the accused hazers. Player X finally sat down with Butler in July, after X's parents initiated a meeting.

'I think if the district had brought him in at the very beginning, this whole situation that mushroomed and blew up and impacted our whole school and the football program never would have gotten to where it got,' X's father said.

Again, I don't pretend to know how abusive things became at Napa High, or whether Player X was involved. But any version of restorative justice that fails to include all parties to a dispute feels incomplete.

School started Wednesday at Napa High, and Player X was there. Some of the suspended/expelled students are back to playing football, but Player X will not suit up in 2017. His parents call him a resilient kid, and are confident he will regain his stride after this humbling experience. But they could tell he was anxious about reintegrating after so much time away, especially considering the circumstances of his removal.

'He was college-bound,' X's mother told me. 'He's got dreams, he wants to go to Cal, he wants to play sports. He was on that track. Is he a typical teenage kid? Sure. But now he's got to re-find that again. And that's such a hard thing to do to a kid.'

You can reach staff writer Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.

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