Penn State + Coatesville = Grief

What the heck does the Penn State sex scandal have to do with Coatesville?   Penn State has been a very successful and well-off system.  Coatesville—my hometown— is this poor, down on its luck city.  The link between the two places is that they both afford their sports programs a cult-like status.  State-of-the-art facilities at the expense of academics.  In Coatesville, there is lots of support for a Sports Hall of Fame.  There is no Scholars Hall of Fame.  If there were, you wouldn’t have enough space to include all the successful smart people who went through Coatesville school system. 

My family were a bunch of serious athletes.  That includes my Dad (Lansdowne High, Drexel U.) and me and my 3 brothers (Coatesville, various colleges).  Even my Mom as a girl played tackle football w/ the boys in Windber coal country until she got older and the boys were grabbing at her for the wrong reasons.

The grief that I’m about to unfold was unleashed by the sex abuse scandal detailed everywhere in the media that has tainted PSU football and academics—even reaching the university board of directors.

My favorite sport had always been basketball, though I played others too.   For my entire younger life, my brothers and I had tons of fun playing all the sports at home together, sometimes w/ my parents.  I was so proud that I made the junior varsity basketball team at Scott High School,  a program that from a young age I had seen kicking butt in the Ches-Mont League and beyond.  I was always a great b-ball player.  So even though I couldn’t palm the ball, dunk, or dribble circles around people, I knew how to play smart and became one of the top scorers and rebounders on our excellent JV team— made up of people I’d played with or against for years.  So I liked the JV team and our coach—we all got along. 

So it was just plain creepy when, coming home from a pre-season game in Norristown —JVs up front  and Varsity in back, I started hearing people screaming and yelling—seemingly in pain— from the (dark) back of the bus.    There would be a pause in the screams, and then the whole scenario would start up again.  But because there was a lot of “horsing around”—you know, boys will be boys— on these trips, so I tried to not let my paranoia rule.   Meanwhile, the varsity coach and JV coach were sitting together in the very front of the bus.  These guys were usually on top of everything.   Yet I watched them act like  nothing was going on and not even turn around.   Talk about disjointed and disorienting!  Sitting across the aisle from me was my good friend B. who I hung out with and played a lot of sports with.  He grew up right near me on Kings Highway and was the nephew of a well known local industrialist.  And he looked as scared as me—neither of us would look back to see the source of all this chaos and upset. 

A bunch of varsity players came up from the back of the bus, grabbed B. and dragged him back with them.  And suddenly the noise started up again and the whole scene just getting uglier and uglier.  Meanwhile, still no acknowledgment from the front, including the bus driver, that anything was wrong.  B. came back to his seat all messed up looking.  Then a bunch of big  guys came and dragged me out of my seat, pushed me face down onto the back seat and pulled my pants down.  That was humiliating enough, since nobody had ever violated my physical privacy that way.  But then, with a guy holding each limb, they proceeded with great glee to whip my bare butt with belts and belt buckles for what seemed like an eternity. When they were done with me,  I pulled my pants back up and limped back to my seat like a beaten dog.  Which in reality I was.   In my house, we never would think to  treat even an animal this.  I was filled with fear and shame,  and a feeling of betrayal from all these people who were a part of  a supposed “team” and whom I respected.  When I got home I took my clothes off and there were welts and cuts all on my behind and blood all over my underwear. I buried it deep in the laundry hamper, trying to hide the evidence from my Mom because sShe was the boss of the home front and didn’t miss a trick. 

I came home from school the next day and my Mom gave me a look I’d never seen before.  Here, she’d discovered the bloody underwear.  Since I was only 15, to have to expose such an embarrassing and vulnerable thing to my own mother at such at awkward age made me feel even worse.  My Dad and Mom were caring, loving and protective parents.  My Dad at the time was on the school board,and a longtime associate and friend of the high school principal (once the head b-ball coach).  He also knew both coaches, helped establish the Coatesville Little League, and was generally one of  the biggest Coatesville sports boosters you could imagine.  He took our family to all the h.s. football and b-ball games when we were kids.  Although he was pretty even-tempered, I’d never seen my Dad so upset and agitated by this incident, and  he said he would get to the bottom of it.  That meant going up against our varsity basketball coach who’d been recruited here with Philly b-ball cred.  From the beginning he’d led Coatesville basketball to fantastic state-wide records,  which brought a lot of pride to this blue collar community.  So he was worshiped then (and to this day) and given a respectful, colorful nickname by which he is still is known—just like JoePa.  So much so that his stature trumped the principal, my Dad, my family, and our community.  Again,  so much like Penn State.  His image and the sports program, esp. basketball, was protected and I was literally thrown under the bus even though I had tried to keep the code and keep quiet about the whole thing.  But once confronted, I wasn’t going to lie to my parents for anyone.

Call me obsessed, but  I continued to play basketball.  Nobody on the team, my coaches or my parents ever talked about it again.  And there was this implied message to me:  Man up and take one for the team, because society’s obsession with sports over all won out.  This abusive custom stopped—so some good came out of it. Yet it emotionally screwed me up so much I started contemplating suicide.  I still finished my JV year with high rebounding,  scoring, and assist stats, just to make the varsity squad and be benched for 11th and 12th grade, and see less deserving players play before me.  I got the message:  The whistle blower gets punished. 

My varsity coach is still alive and I don’t hate him and he’s even supported our nonprofit.  We don’t speak about this incident even though I’m sure it’s been our minds at some point.  The statute of limitations is long gone and at the time my family and I didn’t take it any further.  I have been turned off since then by organized sports, particularly Coatesville sports.  Still a Phillies fan though and catch the Eagles sometimes—you can take the boy out of sport, but you can’t take the sports out of the boy.   I want to say:  Wake up society!  Everyone is a worthwhile human being and deserves to succeed and feel safe and secure in their own skin. Ironically this Penn State scandal has uncorked this repressed grief in so many abuse victims of all ages across the country,  because the invisible walls of fear that protects these powerful people has been breached and torn down. 

I truly hope that the result of the incredible ethical chaos and exposure going on everywhere is a clearer conscientiousness about how we go about making this a better world:  Helping, caring , showing empathy, and a respect for justice rather than revenge.  Let’s “human” up and become equals and that includes you too, one percenters.