A report on the actions of a visiting Bartlett High School hockey player during a contest between the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé Crimson Bears and their Anchorage opponent Golden Bears was not sent to the Alaska School Activities Association within the required 24 hours of the offense, according to an ASAA representative.
After Saturday’s game at Juneau’s Treadwell Ice Arena, a Bartlett player had to be restrained and escorted from the ice, but not before conduct that included swearing and using intimidating language. The player was ejected for his conduct, which according to ASAA regulations must be properly reported.
“I will tell you what is supposed to happen, because obviously it didn’t happen,” ASAA Associate Director Brian Hosken said. “I am supposed to receive the ejection report from the calling official within 24 hours of the incident.”
According to Hosken, such a report would identify the date, time, location, participating schools and the ejected athlete or coach, and details of the incident citing specific rules. Hosken would receive the report and submit it to the schools and expect a response from the athletic directors or assistant principals.
“And they inform me of additional penalties or how they handled the situation,” Hosken said.
An athlete would be removed from the remainder of the game plus the following game at the same level.
“Pending on the severity of the infraction, schools have the ability to, obviously if they would like to, have a more stringent penalty, they can do so as well,” Hosken said. “Also ASAA, the executive director can apply further sanctions if he feels it is necessary depending upon the incident itself.”
Reports are typically submitted through the ASAA website and go to Hosken, who noted that this year’s reports are par with the volume typically received, but recently have increased with basketball starting and hockey in midseason. A recent incident at Ketchikan resulted in a visiting basketball coach and player being ejected from a game, and further game suspensions being issued to the player.
“ASAA did step in and apply a more stringent sanction than just the one-game sanction,” Hosken said.
Hosken noted that, “If an F-bomb is getting thrown at somebody else we deal with it differently than just a kid out of frustration muddling it to himself…Now if he turns and yells it to the crowd that is a different situation. There are a lot of little factors that come into play — how an official might deal with that as well as our expectations of coaches, too.”
Saturday’s hockey incident occurred with youth hockey players awaiting ice time, and families and fans watching. The penalized player was escorted through the Treadwell Arena commons while awaiting entrance to the closed and secured locker room.
“It should have been reported, yes,” Hosken said. “Officials do have authority even beyond and after the game. Just because the final buzzer goes, the final whistle goes off, I mean a kid loses his mind doesn’t mean that an official no longer has authority at that point…It is Wednesday so I will likely reach out to the Juneau officials’ association and the assigner for hockey and request that somebody send me something, at least a game report and let’s move forward.”
As of publication time, calls for comment to high school principals and athletic directors from Bartlett and JDHS had not been returned.
Bartlett front office staff referred questions to MJ Thim, the senior director of communications and community outreach for the Anchorage School District. Requests for comment were sent to Thim and assistant directors Corey Young and Lisa Miller, as well as to Juneau School District Superintendent Frank Hauser and the Bartlett head coach. None have responded.
JDHS head hockey coach Matt Boline thought the incident had been reported.
“The refs handle that, and they did,” he said. “They assessed a game disqualification penalty and that would carry over into the next, I believe, two games…For all high school sports in Alaska they follow the National Federation of High School Sports…If you get a game disqualification penalty it would be for that game and the next and, I believe, if time expires at the end like that it is the next two games…It isn’t just the three penalties at the end, five penalties would give you a game DQ as well…But this one was for the flagrant language and trying to incite a fight.”
• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@juneauempire.com.
