On Oct. 11 something happened that made Brian, a 16-year-old high school junior, the object of both hattred and admiration in Smithfield (pop. 5,500), a mostly Mormon farming community 96 miles north of Salt Lake City. In what some describe as a local rite of passage, Brian, the backup quarterback on the Sky View High Bobcats' football team, was taken naked from the shower by 10 teammates, bound with tape to a towel rack and put on display for a score of his schoolmates, male and female. Outraged, Brian and his parents went to the coach and principal. When no disciplinary action was taken, they took their complaint to Cache County school superintendent Larry Jensen, who canceled the Bobcats' last game of the season and the trip they had already won to the state playoffs.
Case closed? Not in Smithfield, where high school sports are a kind of secular religion. On Oct. 21, First District Court Judge Ben Hadfield denied a petition signed by parents and football players asking for a restraining order against the school district. That same day, Brian started getting threatening phone calls—including the first of many from an elderly woman who vowed to set fire to his home. Within days, Seamons was contacted by the national media and soon was on TV with Phil Donahue.
"I wish the whole thing would die out," says a weary Brian, "but now that everyone in the country knows the story, maybe I can keep this from happening to someone else."
On the day it happened to Brian, his teammates used two-inch-wide strips of athletic tape to secure his hands and feet. They taped his genitals as well. After that, according to Brian, they lured 20-odd spectators. "Everybody was laughing," Seamons later told the Los Angeles Times. "Then I heard a scream, and when I looked up, I saw the girl I'd taken to [the] homecoming [dance]. The next day I said hello to her, and she just laughed and kept on going. The humiliation was tons worse than physical injury."
Brian's parents, Jane, a homemaker, and Sherwin, a contractor, complained to Sky View High football coach Doug Snow and principal Myron Benson, who sought to contain things by having the perpetrators write a letter of apology. "It needs to go on record that there was no malice in the situation," said Snow in a statement. "We don't condone hazing...it's just something that has always gone on in locker rooms."
Not satisfied with a simple apology, Jane Seamons asked that the guilty students be disciplined but was rebuffed by Coach Snow, who, she says, told her "he could think of nothing that would justify kicking one of his players off the team or even suspending any of them." (Snow denies making this statement.)
Brian wanted to continue playing with the team but was told by a team cocaptain that first he would have to forgive and forget. When he refused, says Brian, Snow told him he would not be playing that weekend. That's when the Seamonses contacted Jensen. Five days later he announced the cancellations, unleashing fury in Smithfield and a flood of letters sympathetic to Brian from people around the country.
These days the Sky View hallways can be like a gauntlet for Brian. A tap on the shoulder might be a gesture of support, but it could also be one of his former teammates trying to bait him into a fight. Jane says Brian has been a "champion of the underdog since he was a little boy." But he doesn't feel much like a champion now. In fact, he says if he had known all this was going to happen, he might not have made an issue of the hazing. "I would have thought about it for a couple more days [before complaining]," says Brian wistfully. "I would have tried to decide if it was really worth it."
WILLIAM PLUMMER
JERRY JOHNSTON in Smithfield
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- Jerry Johnston.
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