My interest in hazing began in 2003 when a 30-year high school football coach was fired for the horrific incidents that occurred at Mepham High School in New York.

Coach Mac, as he was affectionately known, had spoon-fed his athletes and trusted them. As the sexual-abuse hazings were uncovered, though, he felt betrayed. He lost more than his reputation and his dreams, as did many of the students on the team.

Maybe it began then. Maybe that was the year coaches started to really be held accountable for their team’s behavior, not in terms of their win/loss ratio, but in terms of hazing events. Until then, it often was the individual perpetrators who were punished. But with criminal and civil lawsuits, and claims for $50 million, the Mepham hazing raised the bar — and perhaps the attention — of lawmakers, administrators and insurance companies.

Last year seemed to be a record year — for coaches at least. Hazing cost several their jobs. In Florida, a high school girls’ soccer coach resigned under pressure after teammates initi-ated a 15-year-old with an old-fashioned “swirly.” This time, however, they dropped her on her head, causing neurological damage. The cost of this hazing: student injured, veteran players suspended from the state playoffs and a jobless coach. Gov. Jeb Bush also signed the toughest hazing law last year, named after a boy who died because of hazing. A jury awarded his parents $14 million.

In California, a high school freshman soccer player had her hands and feet duct taped and was dragged down a hotel hallway. Her teammates piled on her and touched her inappropriately. The coach and students did not recognize this as hazing, but the jury did, awarding the victim $110,000.

A Texas school fired its athletics director and football coaches. Another released a wrestling coach who had earned coach-of-the-year honors the previous season. 

Marquette University suspended its lacrosse team after a hazing incident. McGill University in Canada canceled its football season due to a hazing called “Dr. Broom,” a ritual that cost $30,000 in fines, plus the revenues lost after football games were banned from television for 2006 and 2007. 

The coach and general manager of the Ontario Hockey League Windsor Spitfires lost his job after a hazing ritual called “the hot box.”

Those are among the many coaches, teams and victims who paid a hefty price due to hazings that skidded into the hazardous zone.

Hazing is expensive. In a hazing, the psychological trauma to the victims, the team, the coach and the community cause significant emotional costs. Moreover, the actual costs in terms of lost careers, lost seasons and lost dreams are immeasureable.

With such psychological and financial incentives evident, hazing should be easy to stop.

People must realize that the blueprint of hazing begins when an athlete first experiences it. Whether the student is a victim or simply a member of the same group (for example, a classmate), they identify with the hazing victim and are psychologically affected by the event. The next season, those athletes become bystanders and the entire process is reinforced as they observe a new group being hazed. When their status is elevated, they become veterans, leaders and sometimes perpetrators. At this point, the senior members feel they have the right — and duty — to repeat what was done to them, to initiate the newcomers.

This entire blueprint is stuffed into their backpacks and taken to college. The groundbreaking Alfred University study several years ago found that 79 percent of respondents had been hazed in high school. Therefore, it is likely that those who have been hazed will haze.

College coaches, athletics directors and administrators need to recognize that athletes come to college predisposed to haze. They expect to be hazed and to haze, in the same way that they expect to practice and play.

Who is best positioned to stop the trend? Coaches. Frequently, the coaches themselves experienced the blueprint. That is why the lines get blurred and the definitions are diluted. But most coaches are taking the right approach and telling their teams that hazing is unacceptable.

On my flight to the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics convention last June, I sat next to a college student who looked like an athlete. I asked if he had been involved in hazing. He told me about his high school experiences on a swim team. When I pressed him for details, he blushed and looked away, clearly humiliated. Then I asked about his current rowing team. He told me firmly that there is no hazing on his college team.

I asked him why he thought there was such a discrepancy between his two experiences. He immediately began to describe the differences in the coaches and their coaching styles. The college coach made it clear from day one that hazing was hazardous, that it was not tolerated in any form. He did not begin the season by having the rookies carry the equipment, and he dealt swiftly with anyone who implied anything that seemed remotely like hazing.

I recently surveyed more than 400 people, including coaches, college students, parents and the general public, about hazing. Eighty-three percent of them felt that coaches have the power to influence change, since most athletes want to please their coach.

If the coach is firmly committed and states his or her convictions that hazing is hazardous and not tolerated, the athlete will follow that lead. This expectation must be emphatically stated, totally truthful and repeated frequently.

That’s the correct blueprint. It’s not about some politically correct mantra that often gets met with a wink and a turn of the head.

The right message should be: No hazing, not here, not now, not ever.

Susan Lipkins is a psychologist, hazing expert and author of a soon-to-be-released book called “Preventing Hazing: How Parents, Teachers and Coaches Can Stop the Violence, Harassment and Humiliation.” She can be contacted online at www.insidehazing.com.