“Hey number 12, you’re ugly, just like your mother!”
“If you’re winning and you know it clap your hands…”
“You’re racking up the air miles with all of that traveling!”
“Ref, you have no soul!”
Getting rowdie for your school’s football, basketball or badminton game can be a blast, but when it comes to supporting your school and tearing down the opponent’s, where is the line drawn?
Even I have had to ask myself that important question. During last season’s Kaneland-Rochelle basketball game, I did something deemed inappropriate by many adults in the audience: after our close game, the rowdies—myself included—stormed the court to envelop the Kaneland basketball team in a mass of black t-shirts.
But before I joined the mosh pit, I decided that I would live in the moment—and I did the Aaron Rodgers patented “title belt” gesture to the Rochelle rowdies.
Unfortunately, this “title belt” sign tends to look like a hip thrust, which is why I was confronted by a Rochelle security guard and told never to taunt the rowdies again.
I’d crossed that line without realizing it.
Getting rowdie at a game—one team’s rowdies shouting back at another—is a cherished sports tradition, but sometimes what we’re shouting at each other is out of control.
That’s why, before every game, the PA announcer will always remind the crowd and the athletes to let “the players play, the coaches coach, the officials officiate and the crowd cheer in a positive manner.”
Yet, before he even gets to remind the crowd, for what seems to be the hundredth time, the nasty comments and jeers have begun.
“Hey 48, cut your hair, you hippie!”
“Really, you guys wear red and green? Where are the reindeer?”
“They’re called free throws for a reason!”
It’s taunts like these, so carelessly flung across the court, that remind me of the old saying, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” It’s false, and we all know it, because names do hurt—sometimes more than those sticks and stones—and that name-calling quickly takes it from light-hearted sports ribbing to mean-spirited bullying. And you know what? That’s the line.
The taunts are not just limited to the athletes participating either. No, because the overly rowdie student will get too bored with that. What that rowdie will want to do is target coaches, officials, and who knows—maybe even the water boy!
Just think of how idiotic that person would sound: “Hey water boy, you fill that water up slower than molasses in January.”
Yeah. Real cool there, buddy.
So how do you stop this insolence?
The school is doing its part, though due to free speech rights, it can only do so much. Kaneland Athletic Director Leigh Jaffke said that, while it’s rare, she has had to throw out rowdies from games.
“Some have been drinking, some were inappropriate with their chants, and some were just grossly disrespectful,” Jaffke said.
The rest—knowing where the line is and making a decision not to cross it—is up to us. Maybe a rules chart would help clarify the matter. All we need is ten rules, inscribed in stone and placed in every Illinois high school gym. The contents would be somewhere around the lines of this:
- Do not bring mothers into the chants or jeers.
- Making fun of hair color/length/absence is fine—but in men’s sports only. And sparingly. Men have feelings too.
- Stop telling the cheerleaders to fall. They will get up, and they will hurt you.
- If you wear goggles or Rec-Specs, or any other sort of eyewear, stay away from four eyes chants. In fact, maybe stay away from them even if you don’t need eyewear.
- Stay away from the Truffle Shuffle—Goonies is an old movie. Maybe we can “whip our hair back and forth” like Willow Smith instead.
- Referee taunts are accepted; however, you’re only hurting your team.
- To reiterate the first rule, please leave the mothers out of the yelling. They just want to watch their baby boy or girl succeed.
- If the coach decides to wear an ugly sweater his grandma made for him, let him hear your style opinion.
- Do not start two separate chants. This may not hurt someone’s feelings, but it makes you and your rowdies look slightly ridiculous.
- When painting your body, make sure you’re lined up correctly. And PLEASE be on your best behavior; you wouldn’t want a letter to get kicked out. That’d be embarrassing.
So as long as rowdies obey these ten sacred rules, no more problems should occur during football and basketball games. Unless, of course, you decide to go streaking. But that’s a completely different story.