School team suspended for drinking beer

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This article was published 12/12/2011 (5066 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Seventeen members of the boys’ hockey team at Sturgeon Heights Collegiate have served three- to five-day in-school academic suspensions after they drank beer at a tournament in Brandon.

They also forfeited three league hockey games last week while suspended as hockey players and had all practices cancelled last week, St. James-Assiniboia School Division superintendent Ron Weston said Sunday.

“Any further incidents, their hockey-playing days will be over,” Weston said. “The coach isn’t happy with his team, and told them. It’s not acceptable behaviour.”

The hockey team was at a Brandon hotel the weekend of Dec. 3 when the teacher-coach found empty beer bottles in a recycling bin, asked the players about them, and they confessed they had been drinking, Weston said.

Three members of the team were not involved and were not suspended.

The drinking occurred in the students’ hotel rooms, but it is not clear how or where they got the beer, Weston said.

The teacher-coach notified his principal right away, Weston said.

“The principal and I discussed it with Morris Glimcher, the executive director of the Manitoba High School Athletic Association,” Weston said.

“This was unusual,” and the division needed to know what would be an appropriate hockey penalty, Weston said.

Occasionally, one or two students on a school trip or activity may get into similar trouble, Weston said, but it is the first time he could recall the vast majority of a team being disciplined.

Glimcher said suspensions are the usual penalty for drinking.

“We wouldn’t act until the school division acted on it, and then we’d evaluate it,” he said. “As far as we’re concerned, it’s an issue the school division has to deal with. We’d go to the school and say, ‘What are you going to do to deal with it?’ “

The sports consequences were three forfeited league games and loss of practices for a week, Weston said.

The 17 students served in-school suspensions imposed under school division policies, Weston said. During in-school suspensions, students attend school but don’t participate in regular classes or activities. They’ll also each perform 10 hours of community service.

“There was a meeting held with the parents and the principal,” at which “everyone agreed it was fair and equitable,” Weston said.

He said he will tell trustees about what happened behind closed doors at their regular meeting tomorrow evening.

The team will resume its schedule with a game tomorrow, he said.

The hockey team is in the middle of the pack in the top tier of the Winnipeg High School Hockey League.

It has a record of six wins, six losses and one tie in standings posted online. The posted standings only included one of the three forfeited games so far.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca