Posted on 10/08/2008 10:12:10 AM PDT by prolifefirst
Last school year, Simeon High School senior Bruce Zayas was captain of the volleyball team, a rising star recruited from Mount Carmel, and looking at a volleyball scholarship.
But a paddling by his coach last April for missing serves during a game -- a "whupping" that left welts on the 17-year-old -- changed that.
» Click to enlarge image Bruce Zayas, No. 5, was captain of Simeon’s volleyball team and working toward a college scholarship. He says he was forced off the team.
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"I worked so hard at volleyball to get to that college scholarship level, and it got all taken away," Zayas said.
His courage in exposing a practice long illegal in Illinois led to a coach's resignation and spurred an investigation into corporal punishment at some city public schools.
"Anyplace where this is found, we're going to fire the coach," Chicago Public Schools Chief Arne Duncan said.
Fred McClinton, the Simeon sophomore assistant coach who whacked Zayas five times April 3 with a heavy wooden paddle, has resigned, CPS officials said. Last month, the probe spread from Simeon to four other schools, including Marshall and Phillips.
The practice was brought to light by Zayas' mother.
"I picked him up from practice, and he could barely sit," Valerie Thompson said. "He said, 'Coach just whupped me with a paddle,' and broke down crying. . . . He showed me the welts. I couldn't believe it. I lost my mind."
Corporal punishment has been illegal in Illinois since 1974.
Thompson met with Simeon Principal Tamara Sterling and her coaching staff on April 7.
"There was no sense of regret that this happened to my son," she said. "It was like, 'OK, it happened. Can we all move forward?' "
She hired attorney Richard Mallen, who wrote to Duncan on April 15 demanding that CPS preserve paddles and videotape from the gym incident.
"What we learned was that this was a practice in use at Simeon not only for this sport, but for other sports too, although no one up to this point had come forward," Mallen said.
Now, other students at Simeon and several schools have.
Zayas said he was like a pariah on his team. "Kids were mad at me. . . . I felt the coaches and everybody hated me," he said. "At the very next game, I got demoted from captain. Then they benched me. I couldn't take it after that. I had to quit the team."
Duncan declared zero tolerance for corporal punishment in CPS schools. "This is personal," Duncan said. "I was hit as a kid on a team, and I don't want anyone to go through what I went through."
Now playing club volleyball, Zayas regrets being forced off the team. "All I want to do is play volleyball without retribution," he said. "I just want to go to college."
According to my father, the best day of my parents life was the day I got my driver’s license. They could finally get some sleep.
The appropriateness of corporal punishment for misbehavior is a completely different argument than this case.
You still don’t get it. This wasn’t punishment.
He was getting beat because he didn’t perform in a sport the way a coach who couldn’t get a job in the real world. The coach should have gotten the S&*9 kicked out of him.
What I’m saying is that extreme and strange measures might be required in the ghettos of Chicago.
I realize it was a 17-year-old who was paddled severly for not doing volleyball serves properly. I realize this this probably isn’t the right way. I also realize that I don’t know what the answer is for an environment where all but the most spartan dicsipline has broken down, and am not ready to discount corporal coercion as a possible part of a solution.
Hopefully the main idea wasn’t to get better volleyball serves but to get a very disciplined young man who would be a success in life despite growing up in a ghetto.
>>I realize it was a 17-year-old who was paddled severly for not doing volleyball serves properly. I realize this this probably isn’t the right way.
No, it is never, never the right way. You don’t beat a kid because you don’t like how he performed with regard to a sport.
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