DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Cigars, a canceled lacrosse season and the scandal rocking a Massachusetts town.
The boys gathered on an Ipswich, Mass., beach to celebrate their high-school graduation, some with medals draped over their black gowns. Jutting from each mouth: cigars that may or may not have been real.
The photos taken under cloudy skies June 7 mirrored those snapped all around the country lately. But in this coastal enclave dubbed America’s Best-Preserved Puritan Town, those snapshots have lit a burning debate.
What’s beyond dispute: Six of the grads were on Ipswich High School’s lacrosse team, and administrators suspended all six from a playoff game two days later for violating state athletic association rules against tobacco use. The team ultimately voted to forfeit the contest—and just like that, their championship run went up in smoke.
Now, this hamlet of 14,000 north of Boston is in a fierce debate over whether the penalty matched the foul. It has grown into a saga featuring a “a CSI-level investigation” at a local grocery store, and a heated showdown involving two dads in the principal’s office—captured on a police body camera.
“Come on, how many times you’ve been pulled over and a cop has said, ‘Ahh, go ahead?’ ” said Marc Randazza, a lawyer representing one of the suspended students and his father. “There is always discretion, right?”
To Ipswich resident Heidi Garofalo, though, the line was clear. “Kids have to learn the consequences when they do something wrong,” she said. “You have to abide by the rules. It just takes one slip [to] ruin everything.”
It really is “America’s Best-Preserved Puritan Town” – as H.L. Mencken famously wrote, “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy:”
They revoked their entire season for…smoking cigars? What? The image of a team celebrating with cigars was too “chauvinistic” for people to handle and they chimped out? What the heck is going on here? https://t.co/lgno5wSgFg
— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) June 19, 2026