Good news here

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Actually, there are two pieces of good news inherent in our story last week about some Souhegan High School soccer fans’ unruly behavior:

1. The school has taken steps to deal with it, not surprising for Souhegan.

2. Apparently, when fans rushed the field after the Souhegan girls won the state championship, no adults were involved. Whew. That’s a relief.

Generally, Souhegan fans are well-behaved. Even in the days when they traveled to that hotbed of rivalry, Plymouth, for football, and even in the face of, a few years ago, a really awful holding call against Rich Lapham that pretty much cost them a chance at the title, SHS students and adult fans behaved themselves remarkably well.

Indeed, this year, as SHS Athletic Director Ken Bigley said, “all season long, everyone exercised proper sportsmanship during and after games, but we had a lapse at the end of the year.” A lapse can be forgiven with the codicil that no more will be tolerated, and that seems to be what Souhegan has done.

The other piece of good news flies in the face of “fan” reaction as we now seem to know it in these United States, to wit: some brainless adult getting into it with a referee or another brainless adult. In this case, no adults seem to have rushed the field out of misplaced exuberance. Again: whew. Too often, as one can see almost daily on YouTube, adults are making fools of themselves, or committing assault and battery, at games played by kids. Not in this case.

Congratulations to Souhegan for taking this seriously and dealing with it, and congratulations to the vast majority of Saber fans – teens and adults – who behaved, and have always behaved, well, regardless of how things go.