When adults fail to act like adults at high school athletic events, it can create a bad situation.
I have two pet peeves when it comes to covering high school sports.
I wrote about one last year: when fans not only can’t be quiet during the playing of the national anthem at high school athletic events, but also when school administrators elect not to address those fans. The whole scenario makes no sense to me.
My second pet peeve also involves fans, specifically adult fans who don’t act like adults.
I expect high school students to screw up in public, whether they’re fans or athletes. They say things they shouldn’t say and they do things they shouldn’t do because they haven’t quite figured out how to harness their emotions. In their world, there is no big picture. The only picture that exists is their own picture, which occasionally results in some actions that aren’t ideal in public.
None of that bothers me because that’s all a part of growing up. Kids screw up and that’s just the way it is.
Adults, on the other hand, are different. There’s a right way to act in public and a wrong way to act in public – every adult knows that. A small percentage of adults, however, occasionally forget about what’s right and wrong in public, and when I see an adult acting like a complete moron at a high school athletic event it drives me absolutely nuts.
I’m not referring to over-exuberant parents cheering for their child’s team. That’s OK. There are worse things in the world than a parent being overly supportive. But when an adult repeatedly acts like a knucklehead in public, that’s unacceptable behavior.
I was at a high school basketball game two weeks ago, and as luck would have it, there was a knucklehead in the gym. It deflates me to even write about it.
I noticed this knucklehead, who appeared to be in his 40s, sitting in the front row of the bleachers during a junior varsity basketball game. Right away, there was something about him . . .
The first red flag came early when he and his pal strolled directly across the court after the junior varsity game and before the varsity teams came out to warm up. It apparently would have killed them to take the extra 10 seconds to walk around.
He sat down near where my computer was plugged in so I was stuck with him. Moments later, the school’s custodian approached the man and told him not to taunt the students anymore. Based on the custodian’s comments, this man had been gotten into a verbal back and forth with students from the opposing team during the junior varsity game.
The guy, with palms up, replied, “Really?” He kept repeating himself as the custodian walked away: “Really? Really? Really?”
The varsity game hadn’t even begun yet and we already had two red flags.
The game began, and so did this guy. Right from the start, he loudly commented on nearly every play. Whether he was screaming “rebound” or “and-one” or “travel” or “foul,” this basketball genius had something to say and he was going to be heard . . . by everyone. Comment after comment, he was sucking the life out of me.
In the second quarter the school’s athletic director came from across the other side of the gym and approached this guy, which tells me this guy was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing.
I didn’t hear what the athletic director said but the guy’s response was, “Are you kidding me?”
Now, generally, even the most dimwitted adults know when an authority figure says something to them, it’s best just to say sorry and then tone it down a few notches. The “are you kidding me” response was a major red flag.
A few minutes later, after students from the opposing team began chanting “air ball” after a miss, this guy said in the direction of the athletic director, “Wow, that’s a little uncalled for.”
How many red flags are we up to now?
The clincher, though, came in the second quarter. With a player from the opposing team on the free throw line, and as the player released his shot, this guy said, “Noonan.”
Yes, I’m serious. I didn’t believe my ears at first. But then, on the player’s second free throw attempt, I heard it again: “Noonan.”
At this point I was doing all I could do not to get out of my seat and tell this clown to grow up. And it was how he said “Noonan” during the free throws that got under my skin: with his hand partially covering his mouth and just loud enough for the player taking the free throw to hear. Unbelievable.
To top it off, the player was taking three free throws, and yes, this guy said “Noonan” a third time as well. A trifecta of stupidity. Super.
When the second quarter ended, the home team’s cheerleaders set up quickly and started their halftime routine. During the performance this boob got up to take a walk, and when he got to mid-court he decided to do a 10-second gig. He was out-of-bounds and he didn’t disrupt anything, and if that’s all he had done all night, who cares. But his long list of idiotic public behavior had worn thin on me.
At halftime, I happened to cross paths with this guy. I got a good look at him. His eyes were glazed over and he had a not-so-swift grin on his face. Shocker.
I went back to my seat for the start of the third quarter when it all hit me: he was a high school hero. After playing nine seasons of high school sports, going to a jock college for four years and reporting on high school sports for nearly 25 years, I know a high school hero when I see one.
I’d bet just about anything this guy was a very good high school athlete, probably at the same school he was cheering on that night. I’m sure he was very popular and maybe even had a pretty girlfriend in high school. But as I wrote a few months ago in this column, being a very good high school athlete doesn’t translate into being a successful or productive adult.
He was much more subdued in the second half. The buzz must have worn off. There were no more red flags.
If this guy was a high school kid, none of his actions really would have fazed me. But he wasn’t a high school kid: he was an adult acting like a high school kid, and that behavior is unacceptable in public, especially at a high school athletic event.
I had an hour’s drive home after the game, and for the majority of that ride I thought of how completely foolish this 40-something-year-old man acted in public. I shook my head and kept saying the same thing out loud over and over: “high school hero.”