Minnesota Wrestlers Found Dealing Xanax, Forced To Learn A Lesson

WJ Cope10 years ago

J Robinson, coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers wrestling team, recently caught wind of the fact that some of his wrestlers were dealing Xanax out of their dorm rooms. Rather than suspend the players or report them to the authorities, Robinson went the Breakfast Club route, having the players turn in their stashes of pills and write a one-page essay detailing how they felt about the whole ordeal.

From Deadspin:

“He said, ‘It’s Easter weekend. I’ll be in my office Friday, Saturday and Sunday. If you’re involved, come and tell me. If you have any pills, bring them to my office and I’ll dispose of them, and I’ll give you amnesty.’ ”

“Half of it went in the river, and half of it went to J. I know for a fact the people who were selling it dumped it and gave him about 1,400 [pills].” The source did not elaborate on the dumping location.

The essay prompt that was given to the wrestlers is as follows:

“Remember that paper is due on my desk by tomorrow evening. #1 What emotion you’re feeling by getting caught, by letting yourself, your teammates, your parents down, how did it feel and do you want to feel that way again? #2 what did you learn from this? 3 what are you going to do different. Your plan so does not happen again.”
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It’s refreshing to see someone in a position of authority take this approach every once in a while. Rather than ruin the kids’ lives by bringing in the dogs, he gave them a chance to stop what they were doing before things got any worse. It was also reported that the wrestlers got a discount on the Xanax by buying it from teammates, which is extremely concerning. Xanax is nothing to mess around with, and things can go south in a heartbeat when people are taking it outside of a prescription. One might argue that this is an example of a coach showing favoritism for his athletes, but I like the idea of actually teaching them a lesson..

[via Deadspin]

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