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Like I said last week, I am still on a bit of a learning curve as far as the world of high school football goes. This being only my second year in the fold, I am still getting used to life in the stands. As Blanche in “A Street Car Named Desire” said, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” when it comes to figuring out the lay of the land.
Being one who views football games on TV with the luxury of instant multiple replays, trying to watch it live can be a bit of a challenge. It always feels like I am not looking in the right spot when something critical goes down. Fortunately my wife and I are usually sitting in close proximity to much more knowledgeable people who can answer what I am sure to them are our lame questions.
Sometimes it is the all-knowing Andre or, as was the case during the last game, Coach Fred Martinez, who was the head coach for the freshman team last year. There are times when we don’t even know who our benefactor is, but their knowledge of the game is so evident that we take them at their word.
While these people help us while the game is in motion what we really need is to have a mentor for the other peripherals that occur. If not a mentor, perhaps a pamphlet would be handy so we wouldn’t be blind sided by the whys and wherefores in the mystic and sometimes bizarre world of football.
Our tutorial in the sport continued with the game that we played this weekend at La Salle High School. It began when we arrived for the 10:30 a.m. game thinking that this was going to be like every other game we had attended since the beginning of the freshman year. By that I mean free of charge instead of having to pay five bucks to get in.
After all it was a pre-season game and to be honest, up until that point, I had never heard of charging for a JV game before. To be honest, nobody we spoke to at the game was expecting to be charged either. Many, including my wife and I, raised questions like what if some parent had shown up without enough cash or any for that matter? It was not like it was advertised or even mentioned prior to our arrival.
Since the game I’ve been asking people who have been around high school football for years, and I learned that what La Salle did does happen occasionally. Freshman parents beware when you get to the JV level. What made this game different, and why they charged us admission, was the fact that immediately following the JV game the Varsity teams were playing, and as we all know (even me) we are always charged to watch Varsity games.
Apparently, in the past when the games were played back-to-back, people who came for the JV game would stay in the stands for the Varsity game so they wouldn’t have to pay. So instead of making the Varsity parents wait to come in until after the JV’s are done playing, or asking the people in the stands to leave before the Varsity game starts, they took the easy and more lucrative way out.
What was adding to the parents’ already irritated mood from the surprise charge at the gate, was the fact that the scoreboard wasn’t working. For me and the other parents who were already pissed off at having to pay, this just added fuel to the pigskin fire. With so many other things that you need to know besides the score, without a scoreboard you are completely lost.
Although nobody at the game knew it at the time, despite the common assumption in the stands that La Salle was trying to save money on their electric bill, it wasn’t their fault. According to a friend of ours who was at the game and is a police officer in the know, a squirrel found its way into the scoreboard’s electrical box and shorted the thing out.
It would have been helpful and gone a long way toward easing tensions in the stands had the guy at the gate let you know this bit of information in the beginning. He could also have mentioned that they were working on correcting the problem.
Unfortunately, he thought a better course of action was to crack jokes and brush off any complaints with mock sincerity about how outrageous it was that the JV parents were getting charged to watch the game, and joked how we got a discount because there was no scoreboard.
By the second half the scoreboard was working and things were looking up. That was until they decided to have someone announce the game. My guess is, and it’s only a guess, that the PA system was an additional victim of the same kamikaze squirrel. After about five minutes of the one-sided play-by-play color commentary we were all wishing there was another squirrel with a death wish.
Not only was the PA system set at an ear shattering volume level, but also the announcer was telling us every time a La Salle player had to go to the bathroom. He also thanked everyone and anyone connected with the team, water girls, the marker carriers, and people who just happened to be in attendance at this pre-season game. The only person I was thanking was the dearly departed squirrel for at least giving me half a game of silence. I would have gladly given up the scoreboard and paid five dollars more just to have him stop announcing.
The next revelation that came to light in this game was that the higher up the football ladder you climb the more intense the emotions of the crowd get. During last year and the beginning of this year when the referees made a questionable call the crowd would react but were still what I would call refrained. During this game all of that seemed to fly right out the window.
I am assuming that was because as the game progressed the penalty calls were becoming more and more, well, questionable. Towards the end of the game some calls were made by the referees that were so out there that they were being questioned by fans of both teams.
Like I said, I am a neophyte when it comes to this game, but when you are hearing audible complaints from both sides you know something is wrong. Silly me. I thought that once I had left little league, bad officiating was in the past or at least would be held to a minimum. If this game was any indication I haven’t seen anything yet.
As soon as our game was over - the Rams were victorious by the way - we were out of there, as were all of the other JV parents. So the fears of freeloaders seemed to be greatly exaggerated, at least in this case. I left feeling that the money I paid to get in must be going towards squirrel-proofing the electrical system, so I guess it was money well spent.
I hope that when and if the next move upward comes to Varsity that there is brochure or pamphlet to help us navigate any uncharted waters we may happen to encounter there.
As far as any first time football parents coming in at the freshman level go, just give them a copy of this article.
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