At the Mingus Union High School football game last Friday, the fans witnessed unsportsmanlike conduct from their Marauders. The team was not charged with holding or intentional grounding but rather unnecessary roughness — directed against their own marching band.
During halftime, the Mingus Union cheer squad was set to perform, but due to technical difficulties, were delayed about five minutes. After they finished, the marching band took the field. Toward the end of halftime, the football team rushed the field doing high-kick stretches, getting dangerously close to the band members while the band was still playing.
Halftime was still three minutes from end, so the band was not running over time. After three games in a row of the football team rushing the marching band before the end of their halftime performance, Drum Major Gloria Alcala jumped off her stand, ran to the players and ordered them off her field.
The Marauders players weren’t eagerly retaking the field to keep their momentum going — after all, at halftime, the Marauders were down 21-0 and only barely avoided a complete rout by scoring in the fourth quarter, but still losing 34-14. A football field measures 53.33 yards wide to 120 yards from goal post to goal post. Surely in that vast sea of 57,600 square feet, plus the surrounding running track, a football team can find space to stretch not already occupied by a marching band.
According to witnesses, MUHS Director of Band Stanley Dulkoski was later reprimanded by Athletic Director Allen Mitchell, who said the band should have been off the field. Is that any way for a professional to behave? This isn’t an episode of “Glee” — Mitchell and the coaches should have reprimanded their players and order them to stretch elsewhere.
Musical instruments cost hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars, so if a quarterback or lineman damages a trombone or tuba, will the money come out of the Mingus football program? Trumpet players aren’t expecting to be tackled by a linebacker, especially not one of their own. What happens if a football player knocks a band member to the ground? Band members aren’t wearing pads or helmets and could be injured if they get smacked by a football player, even more so if they land on their metal instruments that tend to do more damage to flesh when hit at a high rate of speed rather than the other way around.
Coaches are supposed to use the game of football to teach boys how to become men, not teaching boys how to bully and intimidate their friends.
We teach our children to stand up to bullies and that any good leader should defend their people under their charge. By standing up for her fellow students, Alcala represents the best of what we teach our students. Marauders football players could learn from her rather than their coaches how to be a leader.
Musicians and their parents are not under the impression that crowds turn out to a football game just to see them play, but every coach, football player and fan knows that the game is not the only part of a Friday night at the stadium. The marching band is there to boost morale of the fans as well as their own team, especially when the team is taking a whooping, but if players act like
hooligans, perhaps they don’t deserve the support. Cheerleaders and band players work every bit as hard as the team every week, and they deserve their bit of uninterrupted stage time.
For a team with a 1-4 record, maybe some fighting music — uninterrupted from start to finish — is what the team needs to win.
