Networking the West with Liz Ryan
Boulder High School Principal on Unruly Football Fans
By Liz Ryan, 9-21-07
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So I tool my brood, all five younguns to the Boulder-Fairview football game last night, the first game of the season. And right from the get, the Boulder fans are chanting “F#CK YOU FAIRVIEW” which is a tough chant to explain to a five-year-old, and that’s how old my youngest kid is. So I think “Well, the adults will calm them down.” No way.
The chanting went on throughout the game. Not only that, but the Boulder Daily Camera reported today that there were reports called in to the Boulder PD about a man with a gun in the bushes next to the stadium, and another story about someone throwing a flaming shirt into the crowd.
I took my smaller kids home at halftime and my husband stayed at the game with the older ones. When I was leaving, it was an incredible trial to get through the crowd. There was no crowd control at all. I saw about a half-dozen ordinary people in teeshirts that said Security but they weren’t providing any Security service that I could see. No flashlights, no encouraging people not to block the aisles, etc. The scariest part of leaving Recht Field is crossing over the bridge between the school and the stadium. It’s one of those human funnels that brings to mind the exactly wrong Who concert. Same deal, no security, no crowd control; I saw one pair of uniformed Boulder PD officers walking through the stands at one point.
Now, if you yell “F*ck you” at a Rockies game you get kicked out. Not so at a Boulder-Fairview Football game. When my husband and older kids left the stadium, he sat and waited for the crowd to clear the place and it was still a madhouse. He said to me “It’s incredible that they put 5000 people in that stadium and have no people in vests waving flags, no crowd control whatsoever.”
So anyway, I wrote to Bud Jenkins, the Principal of Boulder High, this morning. Here’s what I wrote:
Dear Mr. Jenkins,
I took my five young kids to the first football game of the season last night. The colors and the dancers and the lights were all exciting for them. But when the Boulder High side of the stadium began chanting, “F*ck you, Fairview” I didn’t know what to tell my kids.
I figured that the adults in the Boulder stands would get the profane chanting to stop, but it continued throughout the whole game. How do I explain that? Here is a high-school sporting event, and hundreds of people are chanting a curse word at the opposing team and fans. Where is the adult supervision? I could see Band leadership, Cheer and Poms leaders, plenty of adults in attendance. Even at a Rockies game, you are told that cursing will get you thrown out of the game. Why didn’t the announcer last night deliver the same warning to the Boulder students? I can’t really understand why that level of unsportsmanlike behavior would be tolerated. Can you please share your thoughts? I would love to be able to help my kids understand why that kind of thing would be tolerated at a school event.
Thanks so much,
Liz Ryan
Here’s what Bud wrote me back:
Because it happen does not mean that it is tolerated.
Completely apart from the non-standard English (and that’s the whole message - I didn’t edit out any “Dear Liz” or “Regards, Bud") it’s pretty amazing that the principal of the school would take the view that managing students at a football game is an impossible task. Pretty much 100 out of 100 people would assume that a behavior is tolerated if it continues throughout four quarters of a football game. There was no announcement over the PA system encouraging fans to refrain from cursing. If people were ejected, I don’t know who might have ejected them, and there clearly weren’t enough people tossed out to snuff or even make a tiny dent in the F-U enthusiasm. Bud and I had more correspondence, but I’ll have to save that for another post. He said that he and the other grownups in charge had bigger fish to fry than the rude chants. That’s confidence-inspiring, right there. Can you host a football game without flaming shirts being thrown into the crowd? Me neither. Neither can Bud, evidently.
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Comments
My son plays Varsity for Fairview and it was the first game I had ever seen him play. I was on my own - luckily no young children - but I listened, horrified as the woman behind me was trying to explain to her three young girls (all under 8) what the Boulder crowd was saying. From the Fairview side of the stands, we all listened, wondering what they were yelling, convinced it could not have been what we thought. It was.
I thought it was sad when the young Fairview Poms took the field at half time and were boo'd at by the Boulder fans. Same with the Fairview marching band - all kids just trying to have some fun and participate in a sports event.
I watched 4 security people, or should I say, people in security shirts, stand there eating and chatting - not really doing much else. And was terrified having to walk alone on the path behind the school to get back to my car, after being confronted by a bunch of rowdy Boulder boys (from their outfits and face paint, I assumed they were Boulder).
I would like to add, that when Fairview have played Boulder at Basketball at the Fairview stadium, we have had to have football coaches come up for security, call police afterwards to man the front entrances and car parks due to violence from the Boulder kids, and even had Boulder fans picking fights with players on the court - while the game was being played. Our players and fans, parents included, are all warned before the games to be on their best behavior and not to stoop to Boulders level. That behavior is not tolerated in any way by Fairview principal, or especially coaching staff.
I too wrote a letter to the Principal of Boulder after the football game, but did not even get a reply.
Good work
Kim.