Wawota U18 coach, some players suspended after dressing room incident

A Saskatchewan minor hockey team has landed in hot water and had its playoff run put to an end due to inappropriate social media posts.

A few players with the U18 A Wawota Flyers of the Moose Mountain Minor Hockey League were shown in social media posts drinking alcohol inside their locker room, and the posts were captioned with profanity-laden descriptions.

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The photos were posted after the team’s win over Radville on March 11 during the semifinals of the league’s playoffs.

The images – posted to an account branded as Wawota Midget Hockey – quickly came to the attention of the league’s board of directors.

Jesse Juneau, the league’s president, said a decision had to be made quickly. After a board meeting, he said the league decided the team wouldn’t be allowed to continue with its playoff games.

Juneau said the league has been getting “an endless amount of calls and emails” from parents who are upset over the decision, “but at the end of the day, the images that were produced were minors in the dressing room with alcohol and sexual connotations, and just the general hashtags were really vile stuff. The account itself was actually branded Wawota Midget Hockey, and there was a lot of Wawota images (and) the Flyers logo. It was just a really bad look.”

When Hockey Saskatchewan was alerted about the situation, the organization elected to suspend the team’s coach, Mark Cudmore, until next November and suspended the player responsible for posting the photos for 20 games.

“We chose to suspend the coach, as the coach is responsible for players in dressing rooms,” said Kelly McClintock, general manager of Hockey Saskatchewan.

“We have a social media policy that is very clear for all our members. We have been dealing with social media violations for eight to 10 years, so this isn’t something new that came up.”

The league imposed its own disciplinary measures as well, which included 13-game suspensions for three players and a 10-game suspension for one other player, while also not allowing the club to continue with its playoff games.

“Being in the playoffs and one win away from going to the league final and getting kicked out of the playoffs at that time is an upsetting thing for players who didn’t have much involvement with it, but it looked like a team-branded account,” Juneau said.

“Our decision was to forfeit three games, which would eliminate them from playoffs. There was one or four individuals responsible for it all, and the whole team got kicked out of the playoffs because of it.”

Juneau said he thinks the league made the right call, given the circumstances.

“There was a lot of heat going on between the two teams. We didn’t think that (after) eliminating those four players it would be safe for the series to continue. Eliminating them from playoffs, I think, was the best route.”

McClintock said Hockey Saskatchewan didn’t feel the extra punishment was warranted.

“We didn’t think they should do that… The head coach is always responsible for activity that goes on the dressing room, et cetera. So we held that individual responsible and the person who posted the social media,” McClintock said.

“We felt the team should continue on in playoffs. The players that were suspended, suspend them and don’t allow them to participate, but why should the entire team be penalized when it was the actions of a few?”

McClintock added that cell phones are not supposed to be allowed in locker rooms.

Juneau said the league stands by its decision.

“I think it was justified. The images are shared everywhere right now. It’s disgusting that somebody would share it. You would think as soon as someone had it on their phone, they would want it deleted immediately, but it spread. People in Manitoba were calling me, and B.C., and even had a couple in Mexico get wind of it,” Juneau said.

“If this goes any further, I don’t want to be the league to turn a blind eye to this behaviour. This is everything Hockey Canada is saying they want to eliminate from the game.”

Juneau said Wawota Minor Hockey called in a social media guru who talked to students at the local high school about the situation.

“I spoke to the president of Wawota Minor Hockey, and he was upset by (the decision), of course, but once it blew over it kind of went ‘OK, we understand now,’” Juneau said.

McClintock said Hockey Saskatchewan tries to promote responsible use of social media.

“Unfortunately, in today’s world there’s a lot of young people that make inappropriate decisions and, ultimately, when the complaints are made they have to listen to the discipline that’s provided, and lessons are learned,” McClintock said.

Hockey Saskatchewan said it will be holding sessions with minor hockey associations, emphasizing the need to be aware of what’s going on social media.

“I think this was a good lesson for the associations in that part of the province. I think there were probably some other teams’ internal social media avenues that were being used and being inappropriate, and I think a lot of stuff has been deleted or stopped,” McClintock said.

He said his hope is that something like this doesn’t happen again.

“If it does happen again, now we have this precedent set that if it does happen in the future, we have it on paper that is the penalty for that,” Juneau said.