Sore losers acting like children.
Española Valley High School basketball fans should be ashamed of themselves. Their behavior during and after the March 9 basketball game at the High School against Del Norte High School got us recognized by the Albuquerque television stations and the New Mexico Activities Association. They were described by one commentator as “hostile.”
Someone threw a water bottle at a Del Norte player on the court after the game and one or more people shot paint balls at the bus as it was leaving Española. Athletic Director Matthew Abeyta insists that didn’t happen on campus. We don’t expect police to figure out who the culprits are, but it wouldn’t matter much anyway as the criminal charge and penalty would be insignificant.
They did arrest two people at the gym. One tackled District Security Director Christian Lopez. Another tussled with a city cop before charging toward a fan on the gym floor.
The actions are significant. We’re supposed to be a civilized society sharing the same values and behaviors. We were supposed to be gracious hosts.
It would be appropriate for the Association to ban fans from the first few games of next season. Like spoiled children, the Valley’s basketball fans can’t seem to behave while watching a game, played by children.
Where is Abeyta on this? While the District did its typical radio silence, Abeyta should be in front of this, publicly apologizing for our immature fans. We hope he and basketball coach Gabe Martinez were on the phone the next morning with the Del Norte coach apologizing for our fans.
Yes Del Norte fans were part of the problem. That’s not our problem. Our problem is Española fans.
Fanatic
[fəˈnadik]
NOUN
A person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause.
The diminutive of fanatic is fan.
Let’s talk about fan behavior at basketball games and focus on a few descriptive words in that definition. Excessive means more than enough, too much. Zeal is enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause. Basketball is not a cause but there’s plenty of zeal in the north.
Then there’s the extreme religious or political cause. Basketball is definitely a religious cause. Not to throw shade on any of our fine religious institutions but none of them can come close to filling the Española Valley High School gym a couple times a week, much less get people to pay to enter.
Being a fan in a normal use of the word is fine. We fail to understand why or how a person can be passionate to the point of losing control about a sport someone else is playing but it is common in almost every society. It might be soccer (football, if you will) or football or baseball but in Española, we have a serious problem with people being laser-focused on basketball.
It’s unhealthy to the point most parents, grandparents and legal guardians care less about their child’s education than they do about a game, played by children.
Their zeal is misplaced. Even if the Valley had produced a single Division 1 basketball recruit, most fans are over the top on their “support” of their basketball team. It’s very sad for these teens to realize later in life that they peaked in high school, because they focused on basketball instead of planning for their future, you know the next 40 to 50 years.
Española School District coaches and athletic directors over the years have committed terrible offenses in the name of winning basketball games. While committing those atrocities, they’ve ignored education, neglected students’ feelings and growth and bullied boys and girls alike. Their egos have not allowed them to see their crimes clearly and we know of several who would pass a lie detector test if asked if they did anything wrong and answered no.
These people, who need mental help, spur fans to behave the way they do. And to what end? Fans misbehaving at a game anywhere does not help the players be better at what they do. It doesn’t encourage them to practice more and get better. It teaches them bad sportsmanship. And sportsmanship is something no longer taught or practiced in high school sports.