Tuckahoe coach John D.Arco watches his team in practice in July 2013. (Photo: Matthew Brown / The Journal News)
Everyone in Tuckahoe (N.Y.) knows what happened to Matt Kiernan.
But nearly two years after the school district investigated complaints about what went on in an unsupervised cabin during high school football camp, the coaches who were in charge remain at their posts and the village remains split between their supporters and critics.
“There (are) certainly a group of people who have always rallied around these individuals and it doesn’t matter what happened with the team, with the kids,” said Darryl Taylor, whose son, a 2014 graduate, played football with Kiernan. “What happened, happened in front of a lot of the team. A lot of them witnessed it. The coaches left the kids on their own. It was unbelievably irresponsible.”
Kiernan said he fell asleep on his cot that night and woke up to laughter only to hear that a teammate had put his crotch in Kiernan’s mouth.
A two-month investigation by The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News into the team showed a pattern of rule-bending — coaching certifications often not updated; players unsupervised at night during camp — and vulgar, childish conduct. Tuckahoe is in Eastchester, N.Y., located just north of New York City in Westchester County.
A YouTube video, “Tuckahoe football and The Rocket,” shows a player identified by several people as having special needs running down the field and dropping to the ground to the laughter of teammates, coaches and whoever was filming. Interim Athletic Director Rod Mergardt on Jan. 13, 2014, emailed coach Pat Gallo Jr., saying, “I’ll discuss this with you later, but for now, please remove the video.”
A playbook contains plays with sexually suggestive titles. The signal for a play called “cover 2” had the coach crossing his arms and cupping his breasts. Another involved the coach grabbing his crotch.
Kiernan, now 18 and a student at John Jay College studying criminal justice, was a co-captain of the Tuckahoe team his senior year. It came at a cost, he said. When he declined a nighttime team-building exercise at football camp the summer before his junior year, he became a target for his peers and struggled for respect, he said.
For a long time he kept quiet about what happened to him at camp, and the coach who laughed when he heard about it the next morning and called him “Queernan.”
In August, the school board was split on rehiring coaches John D’Arco Sr. and Gallo: board President Julio Urbina and newcomer Stephen Pagnotta voted against rehiring them; Trustees Michelle Liscio, Michael Collins and Cathy Canal-Reichelt voted to keep them on.
None of the board members gave a reason for their vote nor wished to comment.
“Any personnel decision is based on information that’s provided to us,” said Urbina, “and, given the information that was provided, I made what I felt was a decision in the best interest of our children.”
Speaking out
“Even when I played we used to pick on the young kids, there’s always been the hazing,” Allen said. “It may be OK when it stays on the football field and locker room. When you … start calling people names, ‘homo’ and stuff like that, and nothing is done about it …” He shook his head.
Kiernan also spoke at that meeting. He said bad things happen on the team but students are afraid to say anything.
“I felt that things needed to be said because there’s more people and more kids that want to speak out but are afraid because they’re in the school or have siblings in the school,” he said later. “There are a lot of people who know and want it to be out.”
Coaches set the moral tone of a team; juvenile behavior and creating levels of acceptance is a breeding ground for increasingly bad behavior, said Hank Nuwer, Franklin College journalism professor, author of “The Hazing Primer,” and writer of an anti-hazing blog who has been studying hazing since the mid-1970s.
“What bothers me is so many people can go through it and say they aren’t bothered by it, are inured to it,” Nuwer said. “You almost think of pack mentality.”
He said he has heard from people who think bad behavior on athletic teams is just ‘boys being boys,’ ‘toughens kids up,’ ‘creates a tight-knit community’ or that ‘hazing will get you through tough times later.’
“It’s a medieval thought process,” he said. “What I’ve found is that … it does affect you, it does affect sexual identity. The record isn’t good for what happens to people. They talk about lashing out and fighting back and take it out on their significant others. A single hazing incident can last a lifetime.”
Hazing probe
Kiernan said he spoke to school officials about problems on the team after someone else made a formal complaint. The district in June 2013 investigated “alleged hazing of varsity football player(s) and other inappropriate behaviors while under the supervision of their coaches at an off campus football summer camp,” according to a statement provided to The Journal News by schools Superintendent Barbara Nuzzi, who took office after the accusations, investigation and resolution.
“This investigation concluded that district policies were not violated,” the statement reads. “However, the investigative report made recommendations for support for students as well as appropriate systems to ensure that unacceptable behavior does not occur. Under my tenure, the systems are now in place.”
“That’s when I realized the culture; that the people wanted to keep everything the way it was,” he said.
Taylor heard the same description from his son and was on hand when the players were questioned. As each student came out of the office, teammates would ask him what he said and discuss their own testimony, Taylor said.
When it was his son’s turn, Taylor accompanied him and heard his son back up Kiernan’s description. But he refused to let his son sign a statement. No other student had been asked that, he said, and Taylor worried that his son would be targeted for reprisals.
Neither Gallo nor D’Arco Sr. returned a call seeking comment.
“I’ve been in the football team locker room and 80 percent of practices and watched when they broke bread. It’s very well run,” Visconti said. “It’s very professional and … I’m not sure that this stuff happened. I’ve seen just a positive attitude” on the part of the students and the coaches.
