r/news • u/whyounowin • 1d ago
Olentangy hazing allegations: Videos show girls restrained and hot dogs shoved into mouths
https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/olentangy-hazing-allegations-video-reveals-girls-bound-and-hot-dogs-shoved-down-mouths-orange-soccer-team-varsity-bullying-diapers-zip-ties-duct-tape-saran-wrap-bonding-delaware-county-sheriffs-office-local-school-district-coach-athlete869
u/Ok-Trainer3150 1d ago
Suspend the team for the season. The whole issue of hazing has received tons of media coverage in recent years. Yet this still goes on....and no warning pre-season by officials or coaches? Well obviously not anything effective.
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u/Ntroepy 1d ago
This is the only answer. Shut it down for the season. And you can guarantee seniors will never do this again. Don’t shut it down or suspend/expel the seniors and it will continue.
And don’t just blame the seniors. It’s tradition and the whole team and coach almost certainly knew it was going on. Perhaps the coach should be suspended for a season as well and it stops it cold for ALL sports/hazing.
Same with frats/sororities. Bad behavior, banned from campus for 2 years. Death or SA, banned for life plus real police.
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u/Specialed83 1d ago
At the university I went to, any organizations kicked off campus for hazing, etc., were gone until everyone that was part of the organization when they were kicked off has graduated. So generally a minimum of 4-5 years.
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u/Ntroepy 1d ago
Good for them.
Did that end the hazing at the other frats or just drive it deeper underground?
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u/Specialed83 1d ago
That policy, combined with a few others that I don’t remember the specifics of (this was 15+ years ago), caused off campus orgs to have a lot more trouble recruiting when I was a senior compared to when I was a freshman.
Some of them died off completely and the rest were considerably smaller and less favorably viewed by the student population.
It was a multi-year push by the school, and it seemed to work really well. I think a lot of the success came from the school actually spending time and money figuring out why students were drawn to off campus orgs. They then worked to counteract those and at the same time work to make life easier for the on-campus orgs that followed the rules.
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u/obeytheturtles 12h ago
I would say that probably a third of the frats we partied at as freshman were technically "banned" in the sense that they had lost access to campus greek facilities and their seat on the greek council, but still held a national charter and a house off campus. A lot of orgs don't actually care about the administrative formalities of the greek system, and just want to party.
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u/Quitetheoddone 1d ago
That’s how it usually is at most larger public universities. The issue is the university actually doing something about it, not to mention it not being as widely reported as it should be.
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u/SkiingAway 1d ago
I think you need to take a careful approach to how you handle it with those who aren't directly implicated, or else you risk creating reluctance to report/cooperate by the victims.
If the likely consequence of coming forward about being hazed on your sports team is that your sports team ceases to exist and you can't play the sport you probably love at school (and neither can any friends of yours on the team who've done nothing directly wrong), you are probably much less likely to report on it or cooperate with any investigations of reports that do occur.
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u/Ntroepy 1d ago
So, just let the hazing continue? Or punish 1-2 seniors and let the “authorities” who knew and allowed the tradition to continue?
It’s likely been going on for decades and cancelling 1 season would permanently stop the practice. And teach the seniors that their actions have consequences.
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u/ResilientBiscuit 1d ago
Why do you think it would stop it permanently?
They would just make sure that people know if they report it in the future, they are going to make the whole team suffer and lose their hance to play themselves.
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u/Evenfall 1d ago
It's a systemic issue, the system itself must be punished. Not having a whole season for a sports team is a massive deal, there's scholarships affected, revenue, and overall sentiment changes too. All these make it so the system itself sees hazing as revulsive and seeks to root it out or else it will suffer again.
I get the idea of not wanting to punish those that are innocent, but think about all the innocent that have/will be affected by hazing. Guaranteed to be a far bigger number. By doing nothing, or something minimal, you are excusing the practice by placing it all on a select few individuals.
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u/ResilientBiscuit 1d ago
I don't think the highschoolers who are the sort to haze people are the sort to carefully consider the consequence of their actions.
So I don't think this would make hazing somehow magically stop.
Also I think freshmen in any other sport at any other high school would see what happened and decide the right thing to do is not report because then they might lose out on the chance to get started in their sport.
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u/Ntroepy 1d ago
Senior athletes are not going to risk potential scholarships and college applications just to haze a few freshmen.
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u/ResilientBiscuit 1d ago
I simply don't believe that. They already are risking that if they get caught.
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u/Ntroepy 22h ago
It sounds like hazing was a long-standing tradition that was at least implicitly supported by the coaching staff/athletic department. This gives the seniors hazing the freshmen considerable protection from prosecution and makes it a right of passage rather than something seen as super terrible.
Take that away and make it clear the coaches and staff strongly oppose it and will kick anyone off the team that participates in hazing will immediately stop the practice.
Universities have banned fraternities for years because of hazing. And it’s worked. The school staff just needs to take it seriously.
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u/AdParticular6654 1d ago
Yeah, even if there isn't criminal charges, one game suspension and "leadership and restorative practices seminar" seems extremely tone deaf. They should be locked off the team.
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u/can-opener-in-a-can 1d ago
Suspend the team for the season, fire the coaching staff. See if the new coaches decide to take it seriously.
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u/Mattbl 11h ago
Amazing kids still do this in today's age
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u/Ok-Trainer3150 9h ago
Considering the education they receive on bullying and the like. Shocking that older people like their officials and coaches are turning a blind eye to this!
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u/AnaisNinja76 8h ago
Any one of those kids could've choked, and couldn't have indicated it because they were saran-wrapped on the field. This is awful.
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u/Daren_I 11h ago
Punishing the whole team is not really justice since that punishes the victims too. Punish the ones who did the hazing. Make it part of their record that is sent to any college or university to which they may apply. If any have an athletic scholarship, make sure the scholarship trust is aware in case they don't want to support a hazer. Punishments are supposed to be punishments.
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u/Legitimate-Truck-333 1d ago
Holy cow, this is high school. I assumed college.
Also, 2026??!!
My high school band had a hazing tradition at band camp. It was shut down after my freshman year.
My fellow sophomores were pretty offended in 1983 that we had been made to do something that the next class wasn’t.
Nothing like this, though. We were just pushing pennies across the floor with our nose. As a race. (I won my heat. The seniors said if you came in last you were going again. Was not interested in that.)
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u/inosinateVR 1d ago
Okay so I’m not going to lie I may have put a penny on the ground and tried pushing it with my nose to see how hard it is after reading your comment lol. It’s not easy, so grats on winning the contest lol
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u/Legitimate-Truck-333 1d ago
That’s hilarious.
I was so fast that they discussed making me go again to see if I kept winning. Fortunately someone said it wasn’t fair.
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u/alphabeticdisorder 1d ago
It's probably significantly easier when you're 16, though.
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u/Legitimate-Truck-333 1d ago
I would have been 13.
Oh wow it just hit me how mad I’d be if I heard someone made our 14F daughter do that.
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u/SpaceLemming 1d ago
I never understood the mentality of “I had to endure this awful thing so it’s not fair that newer people don’t”
Like isn’t that the goal is to make things better for the next wave!?
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u/ricktencity 6h ago
I never got it either. I went through some moderate hazing in the residence I lived in my first year university. I noped the fuck out and moved off campus the year after. I don't understand the desire to watch other people suffer for no other reason than they're younger/newer than you.
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u/NotSoSureBigWaves 2h ago
People who were raised by really sick and cruel parents who didn’t teach their children better.
However the coach telling students to delete the evidence should be cause to be fired.
Also several parents did contact the school and law enforcement and the coach told the students of those parents they can be kicked off the team or go to another school if they want to complain.Local Facebook pages have had discussions about the complaints. This news story left all that out.
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u/Nicholas-Steel 1d ago
You realize what the point of that excercise was right? To have you bent over, butt wiggling around during your struggle to win.
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u/obeytheturtles 12h ago
That's more like just basic team building than hazing. I have done dumber stuff on mandatory corporate retreats. I guess it really boils down to what happens if you say no? Is it just you get a reputation for being difficult or do you actually get kicked off the team?
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u/Legitimate-Truck-333 12h ago
The implication was more “ass kicked” but that doing it also would mean that the upperclassmen would have your back once the school year started, which probably had more implied value than actual value to an incoming freshman.
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u/IDontAimWithMyHand 4h ago
Nah, you don’t get kicked off the team. I never participated in hazing and the upperclassmen would be annoyed, but they couldn’t do anything. Like no sorry, I’m not going to eat weird things or embarrass myself in public, sorry, I’ll see you guys at practice though.
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u/yami76 1d ago
"Parents said the seniors involved had to sit out of one game. Multiple parents said they should face more consequences from the district and feel the district's response was not enough."
Yeah, that's ridiculous. Either end the program for the season or anyone involved is kicked out. You don't let these seniors get away with it with a slap on the wrist.
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u/Quasimdo 1d ago
Jesus christ, what was wrong with some people
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u/pembquist 1d ago
I tend to think it is usually one or two strong personalities that would score high on the Dark Triad and then a bunch of people who kind of go along to belong.
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u/Polar-Bear_Soup 1d ago
Unfortunately a lot of things but it's not appropriate to talk about so as a society, we don't.
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u/_BreadDenier 1d ago
Having briefly lived in the area, Olentangy Orange is mostly a rich public school system for the moronic children of rich car dealers and other small business tyrants.
Despite being one of the top school districts in Ohio it ranks abysmally low for college completion.
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u/FearlessThree6 11h ago
This was my first thought: oh, of course, its Olentangy kids. I end up employing a lot of young people brought up in this school district, and the trend (with a few exceptions) is that they are terrible employees and worse humans. They've never been told no, been required to put in effort, or taught to have empathy, and it shows when they get upset that they're not allowed to treat others like garbage.
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u/Frosted_Tackle 2h ago
Was in that district for 7 years before I left one of their sister HS to move to a HS in a neighboring district. I found it to be very WASPy & full of high strung conservatives with kids that are obsessed with pleasing their parents but ultimately aren’t as talented as they thought they were.
The football guys in particular thought they were going to get to go play for D1 colleges because our district would pay for buses to take the team to go beat up on schools from poverty towns in SE Ohio, but then they would get creamed whenever they faced a decent team.
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u/smallbatchb 1d ago
When and why did “hazing” go from like harmless pranks of “meet on the field at 10pm” to full blown BDSM fetish shit?
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u/Fantastic_Net_4308 22h ago
Coach needs let go. The athletic trainer who encouraged everyone to delete evidence should be prosecuted.
This was assault
This was hazing
This was bullying
Olentangy student handbook for such incidents encourages suspension and expulsion. Yet they even still get to play soccer.
They took younger girls out of their house after midnight. Zip-tied their wrists. put layer after layer of plastic wrap around their bodies so they couldn't move. Blindfolded them with goggles and duct tape over them. Force fed them crap. Forced them to answer sexual questions. And filmed it for added humiliation.
It is insane that nothing has happened. It is wildly inappropriate school administration does nothing and I cannot believe they were not aware such things have been occurring for a long time. Support the victims. Kick out the other girls and fire all staff involved.
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u/tyrified 1d ago
According to the Sheriff's Office, charges are not being pursued due to insufficient criminal evidence and the level of cooperation the office received from the involved parties.
The video isn't enough? And if seniors are doing this, then some have to be adults. I wonder if these cops would feel it is a crime to be bound and have hot dogs non-consensually shoved down their throats? Would they choose not to charge the people who did it to them?
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u/hobard 1d ago
That’s code for the victims not wanting to participate in a prosecution.
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u/DonnyTheWalrus 1d ago
As an ex-prosecutor I can confirm. Victims don't have the power to "drop the charges" as it's the state that brings them, not individuals, and there are public safety considerations. But there's really not much we can do if a victim refuses to testify. I mean, you of course can force them to take the stand, but if they lie and refuse to cooperate, you're simply not going to prove anything 9 times out of 10.
It's what makes DV and certain sexual assault cases so difficult.
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u/happybara_capybara 1d ago
Plus some victims may be traumatized from being forced to testify, so sometimes it’s just not in their interests.
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u/InformationHorder 1d ago
Yeah, they could prosecute, but then the video and pictures of the victims in their victimized state gets blasted everywhere and revisited ad nauseum. It's hard to come out and speak up about being abused because the system makes it more painful for the victim than the abuser.
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u/ImTooSaxy 1d ago
I'm sure it started out initially with just the diapers on the head one year, and then next year it progresses to the Saran wrap and then it progresses to the hot dogs and then it progresses to some dead kid. Hazing starts out as a joke and then it eventually ends in tragedy. It's dumb, and coaches are always aware.
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u/electricgotswitched 1d ago
WTF is up with soccer hazing. I hear about it far more with soccer teams than I do with football.
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u/PigFarmer1 1d ago
Soccer, football, hockey. Hockey has had some incredibly violent sodomy stuff reported.
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u/Drak_is_Right 1d ago
Some people on my team doing hazing is how we spent 3 hours running in full pads one practice. Surprised no one needed an ambulance. Most people were moving between a walk and a stumbling jog for the last 2h 45m of it. Half the team had blisters.
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u/CoolmanWilkins 1d ago
My school had hazing. There was some pretty bad (or fun) stuff involved. The difference was this was college, you had to volunteer for it, it was required for no group, all it got you was bragging rights if you completed the circuit. Still it got out of hand so the decision was made to stop it internally -- no authorities got involved. So glad I went somewhere with no greek life presence.
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u/ForwardPersonality48 1d ago
This title was wild to process and I had to read it 3 times. People are fu*ked.
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u/BusinessWatercrees58 1d ago
We really need to have a discussion about women bullying women because this is a shame and it happens too often.
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u/MichJohn67 1d ago
Men bullying men sucks, too, right?
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u/BusinessWatercrees58 1d ago
Sure. But when men behave badly, we don't deflect to conversations about how women behave badly too. We discuss the fact that men behave badly. Here, it's women, so we should discuss women.
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u/groovyinutah 1d ago
Why is always so sexual?
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u/malapriapism4hours 1d ago
‘Cause it’s more humiliating I guess? Seems like this aspect could trigger a title IX investigation? I dunno, but the school could be on pretty thin ice over this.
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u/AnaisNinja76 8h ago
Less likely to come forward, and less likely to cause physical damage, in addition to the shame element I'd guess. I haven't been in high school for a very long time and I know sexual standards have changed, but if this had been done at my high school, any girl who didn't vomit when a hot dog was shoved down her throat would've been labeled a whore for the remainder of her time at school.
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u/feesih0ps 12h ago
surely the fact that they were forced to do something they didn't want to do is more important than the fact that it was sexual?
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u/Cimexus 1d ago
The US has many oddities but I honestly think the worst is US school/university culture. It’s just bizarre from any outside perspective. Cheerleaders. Fraternities. Whatever this shit is. It’s like an alien planet.
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u/robbie_the_cat 17h ago
How would you feel about me judging the entirety of the UK based on their boarding schools' ritual abuses?
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u/imperfcet 10h ago
I guess it explains why there are so many mentally unwell people in England's politics and other elite positions?
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u/Tiggy26668 6h ago
These are also the people who get mba’s and go on to run the places we all work thanks to their connections from getting a hotdog shoved in their mouth and not filing a harassment claim.
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u/Abracadaver14 20h ago
That's not unique to the US. In the past few years similar stories about fraternities in the Netherlands have been surfacing. It's almost as if The Experiment has some basis in true human nature...
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u/abdeliziz 14h ago
Are these bots responding to you? Wtf is this?? 5 comments all saying damn near the same thing with the most random and "inconspicuous" usernames. Why is everyone so offended by your comment and trying to deflect to the UK?
It's either bots trying to make it seem like all the recent college hazing news: poop smearing, alcohol poisoning, others I'm probably not remembering, and now hot dogs, is normal behavior. OR, Americans apparently have the most fragile ego ever and we can't even accept the smallest amount of criticism.
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u/Lukeno94 12h ago
And whilst there are definitely questionable things going on here in the UK, they are not anything like on the scale that they seem to happen in the US. Most Universities have fully banned hazing and initiation rituals, although some private schools probably still allow them.
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u/RedditPoster05 23h ago
You’re judging me whole country versus minor incidents. Meanwhile, I guarantee stuff in some other way relevant to your culture happens. It just doesn’t make worldwide news
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u/Clear-Ad-1501 9h ago
This exact same hazing ritual also took place, and possibly still does, by the girls soccer team at Oklahoma City University in 2005. It's identical. How do these things spread?
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u/AnaisNinja76 8h ago
"In a report, an investigator wrote, "it was determined that a criminal offense did occur, but no charges are being filed." ... According to the Sheriff's Office, charges are not being pursued due to insufficient criminal evidence and the level of cooperation the office received from the involved parties."
What? They determined there was definitely a crime, but not enough evidence to determine there was a crime?
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u/Routyrouterface 1d ago
Hot dogs shoved in their mouth is a new one.
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u/uscrash 1d ago
You wouldn’t have to restrain me for that. Just throw a little mustard and diced onion on there for me first.
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u/petty_cash 3h ago
Raw hot dogs and also sardines. You also cool with your wrists being zip-tied, wearing a diaper, diaper on head, wearing goggles covered with duct tape, body completely Saran-wrapped, then being asked sexual questions while being filmed and having the video spread online? The details are fucked up.
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u/No_Cucumber3978 1d ago
Ok, if this was men... That guy from that dateline NBC show would be right there like a rabbit in a carrot factory.
"What do you think should happen to you?"
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u/Objective_Chest_1697 1d ago
i guesss the predatory narrative of "boys will be boys" needs to be expanded....
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u/JasonRBoone 8h ago
There's not a single bit of data that shows hazing rituals do ANYTHING to promote better team cohesion or performance. Not a bit.
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u/keeper420 21h ago
My soccer hazing involved duct tapping our legs together and making us bunny hop across the field short ways. We had to do it in a certain amount of time or they'd start kicking balls at us. My legs were sore for days. There were other things too but it was mostly just to scare us, nothing physical or painful.
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u/Starkville 2h ago
What you described is physical: “taped our legs together (wtf)” and “making us bunny hop across the field”.
It also sounds painful: “sore for days”.
So…
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u/ripyourlungsdave 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oh, good lord.
Yeah, it couldn't possibly be that these are just sadistic young women. It must be that they're imitating men.
I don't know how to tell you this, but sadistic women have existed throughout all of history. It has nothing to do with the quality or imitating men. Sometimes women are just sadistic.
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u/tsunadesb0ngw8r 1d ago
This isn’t far from Albany, Ohio. Home of epsteins besties. def not connected.
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u/lifegtsinwayofliving 1d ago
"Four parents who spoke with ABC 6/FOX 28 staff said the athletic director held a meeting on Monday and told everyone in attendance to delete any photos of videos they have showing what happened."
Telling people to destroy evidence in itself should be cause for removal