Manitoba radio station suspends coverage of hockey team at centre of hazing scandal
Neepawa hockey station CJBP-FM is refusing to include the town’s hockey team in its Manitoba Junior League Hockey coverage after its involvement in now-controversial hazing incident.
Neepawa hockey station CJBP-FM is refusing to include the town’s hockey team in its Manitoba Junior League Hockey coverage after its involvement in now-controversial hazing incident.
Following the late September hazing incident — which involved older Neepawa Natives players forcing younger ones to tie water bottle crates to their genitals and dance around, for which they were scored — two coaches from the team were suspended earlier this week. One has now resigned. (The incident was initially kept quiet by one of the 15-year-old players, but eventually he told a friend, and the story got back to the teen’s dad.)
The station’s owner says it’s not enough. “There’s a lot of outrage everywhere — it’s not just in Neepawa,” Gade told the Winnipeg Sun. “We’ve gotten hundreds of e-mails and phone calls from across the province. They’re all congratulating us for taking a stand.” In addition to ending coverage, he’s also cut his partial sponsorship to the team.
Gade wants the franchise to apologize publicly to the boy and fire both coaches and the team’s president, or ensure their resignations (the demand was made before the assistant coach quit, Thursday night in a text). Until that happens, he said, the station won’t cover the team for at least a year.
“We’re telling them what they can do to make this better, and they’re ignoring us,” he told the Sun, “And if we don’t say something, we’re ignoring their behaviour. Their behaviour is wrong.”
He later told The Globe and Mail: “We're not punishing the team for the fact the hazing happened, we're punishing them for the fact they're refusing to deal with it.”
In the letter sent to the MJLH, reports the CBC, Gade also said the Natives should be ousted from the league.
