What a shame.
Something tells me when the coaches for the 2008 Sertoma All-Star Classic football game sat down earlier this spring to select the teams for Friday night's contest, this was the farthest thing from their minds.
And yet somewhere along the way a lackluster game dissolved into a near brawl that forced officals to call the whole thing off with less than two minutes left on the clock due to "unsportsmanlike conduct."
To add insult to injury, fans of the Blue team " which emerged as 24-13 victors " began to chant "it's all over" repeatedly.
Of course it was all over. The refs just ended the game, because of that type of behavior. But perhaps the irony of the moment was lost in the raw emotion that came forward.
Fans from the both sides could be heard swearing at the referees, the coaching staff and pretty much anyone who would listen.
My favorite was one parent who leaned over the railing of the bleachers and shouted, "Don't you hold your heads up, you losers."
Sportmanship, indeed, was a word lacking at the moment.
And to be clear, players on both teams were getting chippy toward the end.
It should be noted that none of the six Douglas players in the game were involved in any of the scuffles (In fact, all but one were on the sidelines for the final minutes of the game).
Also, a special recognition goes out to Truckee safety Nick Tennant, who was the lone player from the Silver squad to head over to the Blue team to shake hands while the rest of his team started walking toward the locker room. He was eventually joined by the rest of his team.
Douglas running back Brock Peterson plainly looked befuddled after the game.
"This was frustrating," Peterson said. "It was frustrating to end it this way."
Coaches brushed it off as passionate kids playing the game hard and allowing their emotions to get the best of them. And yet, these same coaches have never had a game end early for similar reasons before in their careers.
What the incident (and for that matter a mildly similar incident during last year's game when a player hurled his helmet on the field and the resulting penalty took his team out of contention for the win) exposed is that there are some major flaws in the annual Sertoma Game.
Don't get me wrong, this game is traditionally a great tribute to the best players in the area every year and an even better way for many of those kids to close out their football careers since many never put on a pair of shoulder pads again.
This year's game is in no way a good representation of what the games in previous years have been (there have been some really, really great showdowns in the past with some really, really great teams put forth).
But there are a couple areas areas that have allowed for this type of behavior to perpetuate itself.
First, there is simply no real accountability for the players.
The game is annually held in the third week of June, when most, if not all, of the players in the game have already graduated from high school.
So even though they still represent their school for the game, they are in no way still tied to the school, meaning there is no punishable action the school can really take for any incidents that occur during the game.
You're hope, of course, would be that your nominees to play in this game would be the type of players who you simply wouldn't have to worry about these kinds of things with.
Judging by Friday's results, some schools didn't take that into consideration.
Another contributing factor is that the kids are playing for a coaching staff that they've known for all of one week, at best, and have no allegiance to whatsoever.
They're accompanied by, at the most, a handful of teammates so you simply don't find the same level of accountability that you would during the regular football season.
A simple solution? Move the game up to mid- to late-May after spring sports end or even to the brief dead period between winter and spring sports.
You lose some multi-sport players, no doubt, but you gain some of that accountability back and you may get a little more participation from the players who would have been away on summer vacation with their families.
If you really wanted to get creative, why not try to work out a deal with the University of Nevada (since the game is already played at Mackay Stadium) so that the all-star game is played on the same weekend, or even the same day, as the Wolf Pack Spring Game.
That way, you get a boost in your audience for the college game (which annually suffers in attendance compared to other schools around the country) and your college fans get a look at the top high school players in the area all at once.
The other area that could be toyed with a bit, is that there is simply no one of distinction watching the game.
Sure the families of the players are out there, but what if this were turned into somewhat of a scouting event, like a combine?
I've been told in the past that Nevada coaches can't watch the game when it is played at Mackay Stadium because it would be considered an NCAA violation.
Granted, most schools would have already filled up their scholarship load for the upcoming year.
Just the same, why not invite some of the area colleges out, like Feather River or Southern Oregon, and let them get a look.
Perhaps this already happens, but it sure seems players would be on their best behavior if it were clear there would be coaches in the bleachers who could possibly extend their playing career.
But there are probably plenty of reasons that these things can't be done. The game is where it is for a reason.
And the real shame would be for the end of Friday night's game to be the defining moment of the long-running Sertoma Classic series.
Here's hoping that the juniors watching this year's game will learn a big lesson from it and turn next year's match-up into a true classic.
