Troubling photo worth a significant number of words for coach who refuses to speak

There’s nothing funny about violent hazing rituals in youth sport. Why then, you might ask, is Doug Kovacs laughing?

Kovacs, the suspended head coach of the Grant Park High School AAAA varsity football team, is on leave pending the results of an investigation initiated after videos surfaced showing violent hazing incidents involving some of his players.

Three weeks after we reported that Kovacs was suspended and under investigation, the coach featured in another story.

This time it was about a selfie showing Kovacs laughing while holding up a copy of the original Free Press story about the investigation, which is being conducted by Noni Classen, Manitoba’s independent commissioner of teacher professional conduct.

Although it’s not entirely clear what if any role Kovacs played in the alleged hazing incidents, as head coach he understandably bears the brunt of scrutiny. Even if it turns out he has plausible deniability, some sort of hazing abuse seems to have taken place on his watch.

A parent of one of the players on the team, who was interviewed by Classen, told the Free Press about seeing videos of hazing incidents, where players ganged up on rookie teammates. According to that parent, in one video, a player was beaten until his face was bloodied; in another, a player struggled to breathe as he was being “choked out” by a teammate.

Kovacs, who officially remains a teacher in good standing on the provincial registry, has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

But he posed for the selfie, an extraordinarily brazen thing to do with his professional career on the line. In fact, regardless of what Kovacs actually thinks about hazing or whether he’s concerned that some of it allegedly happened in his locker room, you would think he would be motivated to keep a low profile.

Circulating that selfie, either on his own or with the help of someone else, feeds the very real concern that some of the adults who oversee youth sport have ignored the tidal wave of advice they have received about keeping physical, sexual and psychological abuse out of their work.

Make no mistake, hazing in youth sport is an ugly, destructive and persistent tradition that seems to have survived decades of training, education and unceremonious shaming and firing of the adults who allowed it to happen.

In Nova Scotia, the youth hockey community has been rocked by story of two teenage players — both 14 at the time of the incident — who have each been charged with two counts of sexual assault and and one count of sexual assault with a weapon in an October 2025 hazing ritual. Police have identified the weapon as a mini hockey stick.

One of the teens has also been charged with assault in another incident that took place between Oct. 1 and Dec. 30, 2025. involving different victims.

Both of the accused are slated to stand trial in February.

In case you think these are isolated incidents, consider the Hockey Canada report released earlier this year that confirmed it had received 17 formal complaints over abusive hazing incidents between July 2024 and June 2025. In addition, it fielded 119 complaints about physical abuse, 96 described as sexual maltreatment (physical or psychological, including social media harassment of a sexual nature, sexually based comments, grooming and physical sexual maltreatment), 96 described as “abuse of power” and 78 of social media bullying, among other allegations.

A 2025 report from the Coaches Association of Ontario found that nearly 20 per cent of all athletes in school-based sports programs report having experienced some form of extreme hazing. Of greater concern, the report found that only 40 per cent of coaches who become aware of hazing incidents were committed to doing something about it.

And those are only statistics relating to initiation rituals. When you broaden the context to the whole area of maltreatment — an umbrella term for all forms of physical, psychological or sexual abuse — you’re talking about a problem that has been, and still is, at epidemic levels.

The final report of the Future of Sport in Canada Commission, released in March, contained exhaustive interviews with 1,000 youth athletes and the results of an online survey that collected the experiences of more than 3,000 others. It found that as many as 30 per cent of athletes experienced sexual harm or abuse, while 85 per cent said they had suffered some other form of maltreatment.

It is this broader context that suggests Kovacs’ selfie places him among the 60 per cent of coaches who, after learning about hazing incidents, do nothing — coaches who actually believe some form of physical or psychological abuse is about promoting team unity, or helping younger athletes mature.

Those might be unfair conclusions to draw from one photo.

On the other hand, it is hard to understand why anyone whose very livelihood is at risk from the hazing investigation would want to be photographed laughing and holding up the front page of the Free Press with an article detailing the awful events that it is alleged took place in Kovacs’ dressing room.

It would be helpful and instructive for all if he told his side of the story, whether he knew about the hazing and, particularly, whether he did something about it.

Otherwise, Kovacs will become the poster boy for the casual disinterest far too many adults have in the trauma far too many young athletes experience.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca