Middletown High School (Pennsylvania) has canceled its entire 2022 football season in response to a culture of hazing that had developed within the program, Allie Berube of ABC 27 reports.
The school had previously released the results of an investigation into reports of hazing, coming to some pretty ugly conclusions about an incident that allegedly took place on Aug. 11:
Cell phone video of the incident was widely distributed of the hazing, showing "a group of students restraining two of their teammates and using a muscle therapy gun and another piece of athletic equipment to poke the buttock areas of the students who were on the ground," according to the statement. "The video shows players fully clothed."
Not only were the players that took part in the hazing dismissed from the team, but head coach Scott Acri ultimately resigned in response to the incident.
And as more stones were unturned, the school came to the conclusion that this wasn't a one-off example in a program with an otherwise healthy culture:
According to a letter from Superintendent Chelton Hunter, the school district obtained additional video from an additional hazing incident involving more students in the heat acclimation room.
"Unfortunately, this video demonstrates that this hazing was much more widespread, and involved many more students than we had previously known," Hunter said in the statement.
Middletown -- which goes by the nickname "Raiders" -- is in Southern Dauphin County and plays at the AAA level.
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