Barber: Napa High hazing scandal hits close to home

NAPA - High school sports hazing scandals are nearly as ubiquitous as locker rooms these days, but this one hit close to home.

How close? Between a quarter-mile and a half-mile. Eight mini-blocks. Two of my daughters graduated from Napa High School. Two more attend the school now. We live in the neighborhood. I can hear the drums sometimes when the marching band is practicing.

It's a big campus, with at least 2,500 students. Mostly, though, it's a pretty typical high school offering a typical teen experience. Or at least it was. Now it's the place that made the TV evening news.

And what, exactly, happened at NHS? Talk to parents, kids, Napa Valley Unified School District Board of Education members, current and former teachers here, and you'll find that it was either overzealous horseplay or repeated acts of sexual humiliation. The adults meting out punishment and absolution are either bumbling bureaucrats or well-meaning administrators taking time to get things right. The parents who have been packing board meetings are justifiably outraged advocates. Or they're a mob.

This scandal has left a trail of victims, and no discernible winners.

At least one student was upset enough to come forward to the Napa High administration to report being hazed. Five JV football players have been expelled so far, and others remain in limbo, suspended while they await expulsion hearings. The popular varsity football coach, NHS alumnus and athletic hall of fame member, Troy Mott, resigned rather than submit to greater district oversight. The athletic director resigned, too. So did the stadium PA announcer.

Napa High principal Annie Petrie (a former star athlete herself, at Upper Lake) and district superintendent Patrick Sweeney have been verbally pummeled at meetings, and are the subjects of separate “vote of no confidence” petitions on change.org. At last look Thursday, Petrie's had 251 signatures while Sweeney's had 616.

Make no mistake. You can mess with teachers' wages and classroom size, and you'll get mild pushback. But take on the local football team and you're in for a brawl.

NVUSD board meetings tend to be lightly attended affairs. But two sessions in March attracted standing-room-only crowds. One of the board members, Thomas Kensok, estimated that more than 100 people came to each. Certainly, many of them were there to complain about the treatment of suspended athletes, which is hardly a football matter. But just as many showed up to decry Mott's leaving the program (a reminder: he resigned) and Napa High's unrelated proposal to change its Indians mascot.

One woman at the March 16 board meeting, identifying herself as a member of Napa High's class of '79, got choked up while urging the board to keep the mascot. Another mom said the school and district had “destroyed these young boys' lives, and their futures.”

Her son had not been involved in the hazing. She was talking about Mott's resignation.

“I hold you solely responsible and accountable for destroying my child's college football dreams,” she added.

Yes, you could say tensions are running high.

The crux of the matter is what exactly happened in the NHS locker room. And that is related to the ritual of hazing, a tool long favored by soldiers, fraternities, sports teams and other groups that prize masculinity and/or demand discipline.

At one end of the hazing spectrum is harmless indoctrination. On the professional football field, rookies usually have to carry their veteran teammates' shoulder pads and helmets. When I covered the Raiders full time, older players would pick one afternoon to shave the rookies' heads - each scalp a bizarre pattern of clumps and landing strips - and force them to sing.

One year, a rookie refused to comply. His name was Andre Sommersell. He gained brief fame as Mr. Irrelevant, the last of the 255 players selected in the 2004 draft. When it was Sommersell's turn to sing for the vets, he declared, “I'm Mr. Irrelevant, but now I'm very relevant, and this (bleep) is irrelevant,” and he walked away.

As you can imagine, his mic drop did not go unpunished. A few days later, several Raiders worked together to tape Sommersell to a goal post. They threw ice water on his crotch, dumped bottled water on his head, sprinkled talcum powder on his face and left him to bake in the sun. It was all pretty harmless, but when linebacker DeLawrence Grant capped the performance by wiping globs of Vaseline on Sommersell's face, it seemed a step over the line. Could the young guy even breathe?

I remember Troy Hambrick, a running back who would not make the team, returning to the goal post to mercifully wipe away the Vaseline with a towel.

So, at one extreme of the hazing spectrum, harmless grab-ass.

In the middle, increasing shades of cruelty. And at the other extreme - well, rape. It happens. Ten athletes have been arrested recently at a San Antonio-area high school. One victim's mother told KABB-TV there that boys were penetrated with “Coke bottles, deodorant bottles, steel pipes, baseball bats.”

And how about Napa High? Which end of the spectrum did the hazing occupy? Will we ever know?

The Napa Police Department launched a criminal investigation, parallel to the high school's. The police identified 16 victims and referred 14 students for possible criminal prosecution, plus one assistant coach who failed to report the incident in a timely manner. The district attorney's office has had the case for more than two months now, but has yet to file any charges.

Most of what's in the public record comes from the expulsion hearing of Johnny Torres, a Napa High sophomore and, last fall, starting quarterback for the JV football team.

Torres is accused of participating in the incident last Halloween that started all of this. The subsequent inquiry revealed a tradition of sophomores hazing freshmen during Big Game Week, when Napa plays crosstown rival Vintage High. Torres vigorously denies the accusation, so much so that he wanted the public to hear his testimony.

At his hearing, school district officials accused Torres, a straight-A student with no prior disciplinary red flags, of dragging a student into the locker room and helping to hold him down while a teammate “poked him in the butt.” Even the district says the victim was fully clothed. Some football players claim all of the parties involved were laughing and chasing each other around before the freshman was pinned down.

But as someone familiar with the school's investigation told me, “They don't call the police about horseplay.”

I don't presume to know any details about Halloween. But after studying this topic a bit, one thing really bothers me: All the time that students have been away from school.

Eleven football players were suspended the week of Jan. 9, after returning from winter break. One was reinstated the same day. Five have been expelled. Five still await their hearings. For many, that's three months of uncertainty, frustration and boredom. Their friends go to school every day. They hang out at home and watch TV or read or play video games, or they help their parents at their jobs, or they go to the gym.

I located and reached out to the families of several suspended students. None of them, including the Torres family, would talk to me on the record. Some are lawyering up. All are wary of media attention and worried about the scrutiny the kids have endured, and will endure.

Without having interviewed any of the accused, I can tell you that none of them have been allowed to set foot on the Napa High campus - not to sit in the stands at baseball games, not to attend plays in the auditorium. Some of those expelled are in independent study within the district. But Torres wasn't given that option. He can find a private online program, or enroll at Justin-Siena, the local Catholic school with annual tuition of $18,000 a year, or perhaps drive 20 miles north to St. Helena High, assuming he can get in.

I don't agree with the mom who said her son's life has been destroyed by the resignation of his football coach. But I do think Johnny Torres' life has been turned upside down. He can recover, maybe even grow from this, but it seems all semblance of a normal high school experience will elude him.

Even if Torres is guilty of the accusations - remember, he insists he is not - it's hard to believe the school district couldn't have devised some form of restorative justice that would keep him in class and make amends to anyone he wronged.

Our local hazing scandal started with victims. Now, it seems, the system is creating more of them.

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post. His blog “110 Percent” can be found at http://110percent.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.