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Pee wee hockey coach given season-long suspension for pushup punishment

Photo from CTV
Photo from CTV

The coach of a Pee wee team in Quebec has been suspended for the rest of the season after forcing his players to do hundreds of pushups following a loss on Sept. 18.

CTV News reported the suspension and noted that some of the players missed school the following day after the incident. CJAD reported that some had to visit doctors after the practice.

According to a Montreal Gazette story from early October, Louis Isabella, who coaches the Lac St-Louis AAA pee-wee team, reportedly made players age 11 and 12 do in between 100 and 350 pushups after the 7-2 loss.

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The Gazette talked with Greg Orsini, the technical director with Lakeshore minor hockey association, where Isabella used to coach. Orsini tried to explain his interpretation of what happened.

“Louis is old school, as they like to say,” Orsini said. “But it’s never been extreme.”

Orsini and others interviewed for this story said they feel it’s unlikely Isabella forced players to do hundreds of pushups, if only because 11-and 12-year-old children aren’t physically capable of that many pushups.

Isabella did not return calls from the Montreal Gazette on Wednesday.

But Orsini said Isabella told him the players had been bickering during the game and he decided to send them a message.

“Is punishing them after the game the right thing to do? He would probably say the timing was wrong on his part,” Orsini said.

From his experience, Orsini added, some parents like the fact that Isabella runs a disciplined team, while others have always said he’s too hard on the players.

“He’s firm, but have I seen him go overboard?” he said. “I’m not sure.”

The Hockey News spoke with Patrick Marineau of Hockey Quebec in early October about the incident and said pushup punishment is uncalled for.

“You basically rely on common sense,” Marineau said. “The number of pushups isn’t important. Whether it was 100 or 300 or 500 doesn’t make a difference. We are completely against this kind of practice. It’s 2016 and people have to realize that.”

The story also noted that “punitive punishment does, however, violate the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport’s code for prohibited conduct in sport.”

In 2011, the Gazette spoke with Isabella as part of a weekly series that involved a conversation with a local coach. He was asked about the biggest misconception about him and gave an answer about discipline.

“The parents might think that I’m a little too tough on their kids,” he said. “But I’m setting the values of the game that have to be put in place for the kids to go to the next level.”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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