Maloski denies being aggressive with young people

Drinnan column from The Daily News of Friday, Dec. 14, 2007. . . .

Ladd Maloski isn’t mad as hell — he’s just frustrated.
Which is why he has decided he isn’t going to take it any more. He just hopes it isn’t too late to clear the mud from his reputation.
Maloski, a well-known teacher and minor hockey coach in these parts, has been embroiled in a dispute with the Kamloops Minor Hockey Association since Oct. 23.
It began Oct. 20 when a 15-year-old player who was staying with Maloski and his wife while his father was away on business got terribly intoxicated at a house party and, ultimately, ended up being treated at Royal Inland Hospital. The party, which featured all but three members of the midget AAA North Kamloops Lions, took place in the home of KMHA president Stan Burton, whose son plays on the team.
Late on the night of Oct. 20, Maloski informed KMHA first vice-president Jason Perris, who also chairs the association’s discipline committee, of the situation. Maloski was told that the KMHA would conduct an investigation.
On Oct. 22, at 11:58 p.m., Perris e-mailed Maloski with the results of that investigation. That statement, which was signed by Perris and was sent to media outlets Oct. 23, stated, in part: “The KMHA has conducted a limited scope investigation . . . this incident was not a sanctioned or an endorsed team event, therefore KMHA will accept no responsibility for the events of that night and no disciplinary action will be taken by the KMHA.
“There was also no indication of any initiation or hazing by the players of our association.”
(The player who ended up in hospital has written and signed a statement that leaves little doubt there was alcohol-involved hazing at this party.)
On Oct. 23, at 4:40 a.m., Maloski e-mailed Perris and told him the KMHA’s response was “not good enough.”
Later that day, Maloski contacted media outlets, including The Daily News, and told them what had happened. I had learned of the situation at noon Oct. 22 and, by Oct. 23, two Daily News writers were working on the story.
It wasn’t long before the KMHA set its sights on Maloski and his wife, Monica, both of whom ended up in front of the KMHA discipline committee Nov. 7.
The following day, Ladd, who had been helping with the peewee team on which one of his sons plays, was informed that he had been suspended for one year, meaning he wouldn’t be able to participate in any KMHA activities, although he is allowed to attend games as a spectator.
Monica wasn’t disciplined but was told that if she stepped out of line again, her conduct would be reviewed.
The KMHA, however, didn’t leave it at that.
On Nov. 16, Perris sent an e-mail that was intended for all KMHA members, including the parents of every registered player. That e-mail included five attachments, two of which were the discipline committee’s reasons for its decisions and a document from the B.C. College of Teachers.
Among other things, the discipline committee reasoned that Maloski “did not let the KMHA go through its process of this incident to its entirety before approaching the media.”
Maloski vehemently disagrees with that statement.
“If you read that,” he says, “where does it say they are still investigating?”
Maloski pauses and reads part of the KMHA document: “Here is Kamloops minor hockey’s conclusion and result. . . . This concludes minor hockey’s involvement of this issue.”
Maloski then adds: “Where does it say that they are still going along with this process? I just don’t get how (Perris) can say I interfered.”
The discipline committee also stated that Maloski released inaccurate medical attention to the media.
Again, Maloski disputes this statement.
“If you read Dr. Hutchison’s letter, how is anything I said inaccurate?” Maloski asks, referring to a letter from Dr. S. Keith Hutchison that details the test results and treatment the intoxicated player received at Royal Inland Hospital. “There may have been confusion over the 31 millimoles but that was the number I had heard. Even if there was confusion over the 31 millimoles and the blood-alcohol reading, we’re still talking about a severely intoxicated kid.
“They wanted to say that I was fabricating those numbers. What, are you calling the doctor a liar now?”
But what really has Maloski frustrated is the KMHA repeatedly claiming, as the discipline committee does in its reasons for discipline, that “you have a history of aggressive behaviour with minors.”
That one line, more than anything else, has frustrated, annoyed and angered Maloski.
“I’ve coached volleyball, basketball, track and field, all kinds of school stuff,” he says. “We’re talking hundreds of kids and they’re saying I have a history . . . I don’t get it.”
And how many times has he shown “aggressive behaviour” towards a player or players in any sport?
“There isn’t any . . . so where’s the history?”
Well, there was this one time . . .
Perris, in his mass e-mail of Nov. 16, notes an occasion when Maloski “dragged the player across the bench and threw him towards the corridor of the dressing rooms.”
Maloski doesn’t deny grabbing a player and dragging him down a corridor and into a dressing room. But he feels it’s important that people understand the player in question was one of his own sons. The incident took place more than four years ago.
“It was my son I put my hand on,” Maloski said. “But nobody has heard that.”
After that incident — Maloski’s son was being “disrespectful” towards peewee B assistant coach Rob Smith, who has written a letter detailing what happened — Maloski ended up in front of a KMHA Team Official Review Committee, a group that was chaired by Perris.
“I’m sure no one in the executive understands that, even though I told Perris and (committee member Steve) Horsman that the person I put my hands on . . . was my own kid,” says Maloski, who was the head coach of that peewee B team. “That and the school incident . . . they’re trying to say that’s tied in with the history.
“Where’s the history? One incident.”
According to Smith’s letter, the younger Maloski twice swore at him during a game.
“Ladd came down to . . . the bench after watching what had happened,” Smith wrote. “He told (his son) to head to the dressing room and get changed as he was done for the game. (His son) refused to leave the bench and at that point Ladd grabbed him by the back of the jersey and pulled him to the end of the bench. (His son) was then told to go into the room and change.”
Smith added that he was “very happy that Ladd had finally dealt with (his son) in front of the team, even if it was in this manner. . . . It is very unfortunate that this incident is the issue that has labeled Ladd with an aggressive history towards minors in hockey.”
Which brings us to the other incident involving Maloski and aggressive behaviour that KMHA documents have mentioned.
Perris, in that Nov. 16 e-mail, referred to Maloski as having been “convicted of assault on minor.” Perris also chose to include a paragraph from a B.C. College of Teachers discipline case summary that was posted on the Internet.
In it, the college erroneously stated that Maloski had “a criminal conviction under the Criminal Code for assault against a 14-year-old boy. . . .”
In fact, Maloski pled guilty on Dec. 17, 2003, to an assault charge on a 14-year-old and received a conditional sentence. That incident, which occurred in September 2002, followed a rash of theft and vandalism in the area of Arthur Stevenson Elementary School.
According to the Oral Reasons for Sentence by Judge Shupe, “Then the defendant’s vehicle was vandalized in the school parking lot and property stolen from it. That appears to have resulted in the defendant’s momentary loss of control and his confronting the complainant, firstly by striking the complainant’s bicycle with the defendant’s vehicle without damaging it so obviously it could not have been a major impact, and secondly, by assaulting the complainant producing the minor bruising shown in the photographs filed by the Crown.”
Judge Shupe also noted: “The defendant’s background is exemplary and laudatory. Rarely have I seen so many letters of support and character references as those filed by the defence. The defendant has already paid a significant price for his momentary loss of control in confronting the complainant, whom I consider to have been largely the author of his own misfortune and who will see no compensation from this court.
“The defendant has been suspended from teaching. I trust that decision will be reversed. This defendant should be teaching. He is much missed by administrators, colleagues, students and parents. There is little, if any, likelihood of his again losing control.”
Maloski received a conditional discharge from the court and had to do 24 hours of community service. He was fined $350 on a Motor Vehicle Act offence (driving without due care and attention).
“My incident with this kid at school, it wasn’t a student of our school or any student I had ever taught,” Maloski said. “The year that incident took place, I coached the peewee B team. We won the OMAHA banner that season. And I coached my youngest boy’s Initiation B team.”
There is more to this saga than all of this, too. Maloski says he butted heads with Burton over a pregame warmup stretching ritual that his peewee team used at one point. That lead to an appearance before a KMHA committee and a one-game suspension, all for what Maloski — and his assistant coaches back him up — says was a simple misunderstanding.
Following Perris’s mass e-mailing, Maloski had his lawyer, Richard Hewson of Vernon, contact the KMHA and demand a retraction and an apology. The KMHA did that in a letter that appeared in The Daily News on Nov. 30.
Shortly after being suspended, Maloski told the KMHA of his intention to appeal.
In his letter of Nov. 14, Perris provided to Maloski the discipline committee’s reasons for ruling, as well as appeal procedures under terms of the KMHA constitution, including Article 1004.
In a letter dated Dec. 4, appeal committee chairman John Hamilton provided Maloski with the appeal procedure under “Article 1009 of the B.C. Amateur Hockey By-Laws.”
Maloski and Hewson are of the opinion that because Maloski was disciplined under KMHA bylaws his appeal should be heard under the appeal procedure outlined under those same bylaws.
Those bylaws, however, no longer are available on the KMHA website — a coincidence, surely — and Maloski and Hewson are trying to sort through this situation.
According to Hamilton’s letter, Maloski has 14 days from Dec. 7 to make his next move.
It would seem, then, that this issue is a long way from being over.

Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca.