It Happened Again

By: Paul T. Zeien Jr.

Last Friday night, I like many other Belvidere Buc fans went to Boylan High School to see what many perceived as the NIC-9 championship football game.  Of course it did not turn out the way that I would have liked but the team played hard and has lots to be proud of.

As with many of my eye on sports articles something usually happens that spawns a thought in my mind that I feel compelled to expound upon. Friday night brought one of those moments that fueled this article.

There is a term that we are all very familiar with and that is “Disrespect”. Let me take a moment and give a quick definition of Disrespect as defined on Answers.com “Lack of respect, esteem, or courteous regard” or “To show a lack of respect for: disrespected the law.”  Many of you may not even realize that there were a few instances of disrespect following the game.

I usually have to sprint home to begin processing the pictures, writing the story, and getting the game stats ready for posting to the web. I usually expect to be done by 1:30 a.m. Our goal at boonecountysports.com is to get you the information on the game by midnight if possible. We usually hit that as close as possible. I called home as soon as I was leaving the Boylan High School parking lot so that my wife could meet the sophomore bus to get our son. My daughter and I came home and got a real good jump on the web work. As I was sitting it dawned on me that she was gone an awful long time just to go to the high school. That was a long setup I realize but here is why she was late. Allegedly, some of Boylan’s most respectful students decided to jump out of their car and run up and break one of the Belvidere’s varsity windows on the bus. With this incident the Belvidere buses were delayed in leaving. This type of behavior is unacceptable and I would expect that the administration at Boylan High School will step up to the plate punish those responsible. From the definition - They showed a lack of respect for the school, athletes, and coaches on that bus.
Oh, there is more. The Belvidere sophomore team had many of their clothing items soiled in the locker room. There were items pulled out of lockers. There were items with soap sprayed on them. One player was stuck wearing pants home that were covered in soap. Again from the definition - They showed a lack of respect for the school, athletes, and coaches with their belongings in that locker room.

I named this article “It Happened Again” because it seems that every year there is some sort of violence or defacing floats, buses, houses, etc.  I struggle with why this happens. As I waited for the game to begin and I was sitting alone on the sidelines I reminisced back to the late 1970’s when I played on that field. It was rainy, the field was muddy and there was of course an incident when we were leaving. One of the Boylan players attempted to pick a fight with members of our team when we were getting on the bus to go home. It sounds like I am picking on a specific school, I realize that. I know that these kinds of incidents happen at other schools as well. It is just that for whatever reason things seem to be a bit more escalated when Boylan is involved.

I wish they would try something and just play the game. Think about what the consequences might be if they got caught. In my opinion, these two things that happened Friday bring a very black cloud of Boylan’s Parent Night. When teams visit Belvidere let us show them that we know how to respect others and keep the violence away.