Friday is the 14th anniversary of 9/11, one of the worst days in our nation's history.
We remember with pride the weeks and months after the attack, how high school sports helped lift us back up and focus on the best of our youth, the best of our future.
At its best, high school sports can help unite, empower and even educate a country, one community at a time. That's why we love what we do here.
Last weekend in a football game in San Antonio, we saw that high school sports are far from perfect.
By all accounts, two teenage boys — in the final minute of a game they were about to lose — targeted an assault on a referee.
One player blindsided the referee from the back with a hard hit and the other appeared to spear him with his helmet. The clip
has been shown all over the web — over nine million times on YouTube — and major television networks worldwide continue to play and replay the violent act.
The players have been suspended and may be facing criminal charges. They evidently claim racial slurs were directed at them by the referee and were spurred on by a coach. An assistant coach on their team has been placed on administrative leave for allegedly telling the kids that the referee "Needs to pay for cheating us."
After a recent investigative hearing on the incident, a Texas UIL official (the UIL is the governing body for high school sports in Texas) indicated that the game was littered with trash talk, personal fouls and general unsavory behavior.
All of it, in a word, awful.
Despicable.
Sick.
MaxPreps is in the business of celebrating high school games. Just the week before, in the same state, we showcased in video, photos and print, the best of high school sports — the Allen high school football experience — where 20,000 Lone Star staters rejoiced in every facet of the game and all its pageantry.
We attempt to project all that is good with high school sports and all its vital life lessons, as taught by the Positive Coaching Alliance — an organization whose goals we admire — with its philosophy of using sports as a means of learning personal mastery, leadership and the importance of honoring the game.
Clearly, the display in San Antonio is an aberration. Clearly nothing, including the game, was honored in that moment.
But, like the best teachers and coaches constantly remind us, every moment is a teachable one. In this case, the lesson needs to be that actions have consequences.
We support the sanctions that will be forthcoming from the school, the school district and the UIL.
We also hope for reconciliation — at some point, hopefully everyone involved can have a meaningful moment, a heartfelt communication and resolution. It may not be tomorrow, or next month. But we're hopeful that it's sooner rather than later.
Until then, we hope that a nation, a state, and community, can go back to focusing on all that's right with high school sports. After all, there are at 8 million kids and hundreds of thousands of coaches engaged with it — the vast majority of whom are working hard to become better at their sport and honor their schools, their communities and the institution of high school sports through clean, tough competition and sportsmanship.
