Police investigating Cooper City baseball hazing allegations – Sun Sentinel
Police are investigating an alleged hazing incident involving members of the Cooper City High School baseball team.
A player and his mother reported a series of incidents involving sodomy to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office earlier this month. They occurred March 21-25, while the team was competing in a tournament in Altamonte Springs.
While at a hotel, the player was held down, had his pants pulled down and his underwear to his thighs before he was able to fight off the teammates who were hazing him, according to the incident report filed with the sheriff’s office.
The player told investigators that he witnessed the same group of boys using their fingers to sodomize another player and said he’d heard about at least one other incident involving sodomy.
When the player told a coach what happened, the coach replied, “It’s just baseball, keep it to yourself,” the player told police.
Names in the incident report have been redacted, so it’s unclear which coach the player notified.
Calls to Chris Delgado, who was Cooper City’s head baseball coach, were not answered.
Broward County Public Schools spokeswoman Tracy A. Clark said that Delgado will not return as coach in the upcoming school year. She also noted that Delgado was not a district employee but received a stipend as coach of the Cooper City baseball team.
“The District takes any allegation involving student safety seriously,” Clark said in a statement. “District officials are aware and looking into the allegations you referenced. Broward District School Police are also in communication with Altamonte Springs Police regarding its open investigation.”
Altamonte Springs police confirmed that they are investigating but did not reveal any findings.
“The Altamonte Springs Police Department is taking the allegations seriously and conducting a thorough investigation,” the department said in a statement. “Due to juvenile involvement and sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation, further details are not available at this time. However, as the case draws to a conclusion, we will share what information we can.”
In the Broward Sheriff’s Office incident report, the baseball player’s mother said she met with other parents June 1 to report the incident to Cooper City’s assistant principals.
The player allegedly began receiving text messages from teammates once the school began investigating. One text read, “why u being a [expletive] hiding from [expletive] starting stuff.”
The player has not been back to Cooper City High “in fear of retaliation” and will not return to the school in the fall, according to the incident report.
Cooper City athletic director Paul Megna declined to comment when reached Friday.
Delgado, who spent two seasons as Cooper City’s coach, played at St. Thomas Aquinas and was drafted out of high school in 1996 by the Chicago White Sox. He played four seasons in the minor leagues, according to his page on baseball-reference.com, which lists him as 38.
Ed Waters, who was the head coach at St. Thomas Aquinas when Delgado played there — and was later an assistant on the Aquinas baseball staff along with Delgado — said hazing is not something a coach like Delgado would encourage.
“That’s frowned upon,” Waters said. “If it’s done, no one gives any ‘OK’ to that. … Nobody approves of that. It’s not something that anybody encourages. It’s not something that Chris encourages. If it happens, it doesn’t happen with anybody’s approval. That’s for sure.”
dfurones@sunsentinel.com; Twitter @DavidFurones90
Staff writer Linda Trischitta contributed to this report.
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