6 Mt. Pleasant Area high school football players suspended for vandalism at Southmoreland locker room

It’s a big high school football playoff game at Mount Pleasant Area School District Friday night, but when their team takes the field, a half-dozen players will be missing. That’s because of what happened in a locker room at the team’s last away game.

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Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 confirmed that nearly $1,000 in vandalism damage in the visiting team locker room was discovered at Southmoreland School District last week, as Mount Pleasant Area was there and played its biggest rival.

Mount Pleasant Area was faced with hard questions when it learned of what happened.

“Was this an individual, was this a group of individuals, was this an entire team? Because, to be perfectly honest with you, if you have a scenario where it’s an entire team, there would have been a decision as to whether we were going to move forward with playing a football game (tonight),” Superintendent Timothy Gabauer, of Mt. Pleasant Area School District, told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4.

Gabauer saw Southmoreland’s photos of the damage and launched an investigation. He says he’s frustrated and disappointed and he says the students responsible will pay.

“There was discipline both school-wide discipline as well as athletic discipline and there’s also restitution for any of those items,” Gabauer said.

Friday night, Mount Pleasant Area hosts East Allegheny for a big playoff game. But if the six players had not been identified, the whole team could have suffered consequences.