Responsible spectatorship
t's a good time to be a basketball fan.
With both of Hillsboro's varsity teams crushing league opponents (and larger schools) right and left, my covering the girls' team seems less and less like work, and more and more like fun.
That is, until Saturday at Wellington.
After getting lost (as is typical for this non-navigator) in the dark streets of Wellington Saturday night, I finally located the gym just in time to see the Lady Trojans heading into halftime with a five-point lead.
In scouting out the place, I chose to sit on the far side of the gym, right at the edge of the Wellington cheering section. From this vantage point, I could surreptitiously creep onto the court for some good pictures without getting in the way of the Trojan cheerleading squad.
This turned out to be a huge mistake.
After I took the pictures, I sat back down in the bleachers to watch rest of the game — and found myself in front of the most rude and obnoxious fan I've ever heard at a high school sports game.
This woman was a Wellington fan, and she wasn't happy that her team was losing. And since she was mad, she directed her ire at one of the referees.
This ref was a little pudgy around the middle, so the woman decided to call him "Krispy Kreme" every time she didn't like one of his calls. She spent the rest of the game yelling at this ref — that is, when she wasn't spouting off profanities.
It got really hard to enjoy the game with that obnoxious fan behind me. But what bothered me even more is the fact that she sat with her husband and two young children, who took in every word she said.
And she also happened to be sitting just a few rows behind a group of Wellington students, who heard her taunts and thought they were hilarious.
Did I want to tell her to stifle the harsh words? You bet. But it was more than just my annoyance in not being able to enjoy the game that really bothered me — it was the fact that she was surrounded by elementary, junior high, and high school students who were within earshot.
She was setting a horrible example for those kids. They were learning from her that it's OK to insult people you don't like. That you don't need to respect officials or authority figures.
Maybe I'm taking this too far, you say. It's just part of the game; lighten up.
Maybe you're right. I certainly don't close my mouth and smile every time the ref doesn't see a foul that I see.
But there's no place for the kind of offensiveness this fan was spouting at Saturday's game.
I'm glad to say that I haven't encountered one fan like this at any of the Hillsboro home games I've attended. That's something this town can take pride in.
Passionate parents don't have to be obnoxious ones.
— JENNIFER WILSON
