If we want to stop obnoxious behavior at our kids’ games, there must be accountability

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about a growing  lack of sportsmanship at HS sporting events, including the totally wrongful and unacceptable act of racial taunting.

Not only is this kind of behavior disgraceful, but as you know, I’ve been concerned about the lack of response by the Pearl River HS school district. Are they going to do anything to make sure that their students are educated about ethnic and cultural sensitivities? That would certainly seem like a pretty obvious starting point.

Of course, some parents  have said, “Well, it’s just the act of a few dumb teenagers who made the monkey sounds against black Nyack basketball players. Why should we have to punish the entire school?”

Because it’s not so much a punishment – but rather, it should be viewed as a most valuable teaching moment. In short, all of your students would benefit from a seminar about sensitivity to other cultures. Especially in a school district which is mostly white. Those kids might not know any black or Hispanic or Asian kids. So the timing would be perfect.

But moving on…there’s now even more examples of bad behavior popping up.

 We have yet two more incidents of bad sportsmanship and wrongful behavior at HS sporting events….

One of them is very similar to what happened at Pearl River HS….and the other involves a physical altercation between an adult and a student. That one comes from the world of HS ice hockey.

This is from the New Haven Register:

WEST HAVEN — A Guilford woman who is the wife of a local hockey coach was arrested and charged with assault after an alleged altercation with a West Haven High School student during a recent championship hockey game, police said.

Fans began to argue during the Southern Connecticut Conference’s Girls Hockey Championship on Feb. 25, which featured Guilford High School and the West Haven-Sacred Heart hockey team at the Bennett Rink in West Haven.

The argument quickly turned physical and Officers on the scene attempted to intervene. According to police reports,  “During this altercation it was discovered that Christina Binkowski had physically assaulted a West Haven High School student and the student required medical attention.”

Christina Binkowski, who is 47, is the wife of Rick Binkowski, who happens to be the coach of the Guilford girls hockey team. She was arrested and charged with third degree assault and is due back in court in a couple of weeks.

From what I understand, Ms. Binkowski was in the stands, and must have felt that the kids in attendance who were supporting the other  team – the West Haven/Sacred Heart team – must have been misbehaving, so she got up and either tried to calm them down or perhaps shouted back at them – the details are not clear.

In any event, suddenly some pushing and shoving ensued, and a fight broke out, and during the melee, Ms. Binkowski grabbed a student from the other school by the hair, and that student was pulled to the ground and injured. It’s not clear how badly she was hurt, but she apparently needed medical attention.

The bottom line here is we still want to know more details, but what kinds of words were the kids in the stands shouting….so much so that the wife of the opposing coach took it upon herself to confront them? And where was the security at the game? Of course, we certainly can’t condone what this woman did to physically engage a teenager and hurt her.

But again – the big question is – what in the world is going on to allow this kind of violence to happen at a HS game?

And now from the world of HS basketball. You all know what happened at Pearl River HS and the racial taunting that took place against black players from Nyack HS.

Shockingly, a very similar kind of taunting took place last week at a sectional playoff game between Ossining HS and Our Lady of Lourdes when their two girls teams played in a Section one playoff game last week.

When one of the Ossining girls – Isabella Florez - went to shoot a free throw late in the game, she was greeted by a very audible outburst from the student section of Our Lady of Lourdes in which Isabella’s Hispanic background was taunted. It was heard by lots of people in attendance. It was pretty evident to all at the game what was going on.

Now, unlike Pearl River, though, a number of Ossining parents got up and went to the security people in attendance to protest, but apparently nothing happened. True, Some of the Lourdes players and parents even apologized to the offended Ossining players and fans after the game, and Lourdes did issue a statement the next day as a kind of apology.

But that seems to be about all they’re going to do. I didn’t see or hear any mention as to whether Lourdes is going to build upon this teachable moment or not so that their students can learn more about hurtful behavior.

Again, my concern here is that these school districts – and I’m sure there are many others who feel the same way – that it’s not fair or right to “punish” all the students simply because a few dopey kids don’t get it. If we want to stop bad behavior at our kids High School games, we need real accountability.

We really need to do more. Take a listen to today’s show. There are some truly terrific calls.The Sports Edge with Rick Wolff