{"id":644604,"date":"2026-05-03T06:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/644604\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T06:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:43:10","slug":"hogan-a-quarter-century-of-huddling-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/644604\/","title":{"rendered":"Hogan: A Quarter Century of Huddling Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Jason Colero, the last five-year period has been an eventful chapter in his life story.<\/p>\n

In that time, the MLSE community, education, and program specialist has celebrated 40 years working with the Toronto Argonauts, gotten married, earned his master\u2019s degree in psychotherapy, and watched his Huddle Up program \u2013 which is about to wrap up its silver anniversary season \u2013 expand beyond his wildest dreams.<\/p>\n

The initiative started small, a perfect word to describe it, as Colero \u2013 much closer to five than six feet tall \u2013 began the program because he knew what an impact bullying could have on children, as he was often a target because of his size, or lack thereof.<\/p>\n

In the last quarter century, he\u2019s spoken to almost a million students. A mind-boggling figure, but with technology it\u2019s only going to reach more eyes and ears.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve developed the Huddle Up platform, free to schools across the GTA,\u201d Colero told Argonauts.ca. \u201cIt allows us to reach more youth through all our MLSE athletes, especially the Argos. It becomes like an added curriculum. The teachers have this opportunity and roll with it. It\u2019s also evolved into covering a lot about mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n

The online program is one thing, but 35-40 schools each year benefit from athletes visiting them. The in-person visits become more personalized and have led to some amazing revelations by professional athletes, some of whom were bullied at some point in their life.<\/p>\n

Huddle Up was exclusively an Argos program until 2019, when MLSE wanted to expand it, bringing in athletes from the Maple Leafs, Raptors, and TFC to share their experiences.<\/p>\n

At first, Colero balked at the idea. As someone married to the Argo brand, the father of the program became very protective of his baby.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI wondered what was going to happen to the Argos, were we just going to be pushed out?\u201d he confessed. \u201cThe teachers thought it was incredible that the Leafs work with the Argos, and TFC works with the Argos. We\u2019ve done it in ways where we engaged them with players from different teams, for example we had Nick Arbuckle and Logan Shaw from the Marlies together. It\u2019s really strengthened the message.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, the program is still needed. Argonauts.ca was taken aback when Colero mentioned that despite strong messaging from many outlets, hazing has become an even bigger issue than it\u2019s been in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur own foundation did a study with the Coaches Association of Ontario that said 33 percent of coaches surveyed found that hazing still occurs in their organization, and of those 33 percent, 85 percent think that it\u2019s team bonding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For many kids who don\u2019t want to be the subject of hazing, they opt to simply not play for the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s creating a drop in sports participation,\u201d said Colero, becoming more animated as he explained the situation. \u201cKids who are hazed are more likely to drop out of that sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does that make it frustrating for Huddle Up\u2019s founder?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to get to those people (the bullies) as easy as you are to the people that need the help. Those who are being bullied or hazed need to know they\u2019re not alone, and they don\u2019t have to do this stuff to feel like they belong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can get discouraging because you\u2019re thinking, what are we doing this for? Why are we putting in all this effort if they\u2019re not listening? But then you have the good moments, where people have said the program has really helped. Kids will come up to a player and say, \u2018Thank you so much, I didn\u2019t know how to face this bullying and to know that you guys went through it is really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The school year is winding down and Colero is preparing for the end of year summit. Among the scheduled speakers, two girls who were bullied will explain how the program helped them. They\u2019re now teachers who have benefitted from Huddle Up and can now assist Colero\u2019s crusade to reduce bullying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Jason Colero, the last five-year period has been an eventful chapter in his life story. In that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-644604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}