Only 21 licks to get back on the team? Doesn’t seem like a lot until you hear that the paddle broke in the middle and had to be duct taped together to continue the “licking.” You gotta love Texas HS football, don’t you?

Here’s more from the Houston Chronicle:

A high school football coach beat a student so severely with a “canoe paddle” that the wood board cracked and had to be taped so the “licking” could resume, a Dallas school district report said. The Lincoln High School student suffered severe bruising and welts to his lower back, upper thighs and buttocks and was referred to a doctor for treatment, according to the report obtained by The Dallas Morning News.

“The report, unfortunately, speaks for itself and is, to say the least, disturbing,” Dallas schools spokesman Jon Dahlander said in Thursday’s newspaper. Paddling is legal in Texas but prohibited in Dallas public schools. No criminal charges have been filed and school district police suspended their investigation because of a lack of evidence in the 2007 case.

The student received up to 21 strikes from then head football coach Jerry Sands after being removed from the team. Sands decided the student would have to endure the paddling to return, according the report. In an affidavit, Sands wrote that he wanted to help the student “make it in life.” “It was never my intent to hurt (the student). If anything, I was trying to help him,” he wrote.