Opinion: Adults teaching MMA, not sportsmanship

Basketball is a religion in Northern New Mexico. More people attend a Thursday night basketball game than all the churches in the Valley combined on Sunday morning.

There is no doubt the passion and emotion of the game is strong here. However, we’ve reached a point where it either needs to be dialed back or kept in check by referees and officials.

The New Mexico Activities Association takes sportsmanship seriously. So much so that a few years ago it was forced to create rules not governing children playing sports, but the players’ family and friends in the bleachers. You’ve heard the saying, you can’t regulate common sense? You can’t regulate civility and sportsmanship either.

There have been many incidents recently of fans (from the word fanatic) getting in shouting matches, pushing and shoving and punches being thrown. We’re painfully aware of Española Valley High School’s fan ban for its last home football game. That resulted from fans going onto the field and physically fighting.

Most recently two grandmas and various family threw down at a gymnasium in Santa Fe. One of the pugilists had a bloody chin, the other two different colors of hair on her jacket. Those must be proud moments. Standing in front of your grandchildren bleeding.

There is no doubt where this is rooted: elementary basketball. Northern New Mexico elementary “basketball games” have some of the worst parents in the sport. Swearing and throwing things is almost common. Physical altercations occur less regularly but nevertheless do occur.

Elementary intramural leagues have some terrible fans. It’s laughable to hear the school board president recount a mascot trying to separate two combatants and get hit in the fray. But the laughter ends when you realize what that’s teaching impressionable children watching such a spectacle.

It’s reached a point that Española School District Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez is doing some pushing and shoving of her own. She’s looking at curtailing use of the elementary gyms by groups such as Española Valley Community Activities.

Founder Keith McGill would never have allowed it to get to this point. He started and maintained a wholesome, safe, community oriented program of sports for all ages and genders. In the 1960s and ’70s parents could safely drop off a child for a few hours of healthy exercise and pick them up no worse for wear. The fighting was kept inside a ring where coaches taught boxing.

Baby boomers and Gen X-ers may wonder where today’s violence, hedonism and lack of apathy sprouts. These are the very folks acting like a bully on a playground at their children’s or grandchildren’s games. What do they think that teaches a child?

We support Gutierrez’s idea completely. These fans are not only poor sports, they’re not fully socialized human beings. Since they behave as spoiled children, the best way to treat them is as children and take away their gyms. That gives them a time out and allows them to think about their poorly thought-out actions, how the world doesn’t revolve around them and how their inability to interact with other adults affects other people, especially the youth.

— Rio Grande Sun