I played organized basketball from the time I was 5 through my high school years, and while I have a lot of great memories from those experiences, one less flattering moment that has always stuck with me happened in fifth grade.
I had played pretty well during an AAU game, but I had gotten so frustrated with an official to the point I made some over-the-top, showy gesture and comment to illustrate my displeasure.
After the game my mom walked up to me and the first thing she said wasn’t about how well I played, instead she issued a warning:
“If you ever show up an official or someone on the court like that again, I will come down from the stands and drag your butt off the court.”
Now some folks might feel that’s a bit harsh, but I appreciated that ability, because it illustrated one of the core lessons my parents tried to teach me about life through youth sports. Regardless of the outcome of a game or how someone might treat me in life outside the court, my parents expected me to carry myself with class, maintain my composure and treat officials, my opponents, my teammates and people broadly with respect.
That upbringing is why I always found the discourse around the now-infamous Coronado High School tortilla incident so peculiar.
Last June, two Coronado High School basketball players threw tortillas at the mostly Latino Orange Glen High School team from Escondido after the conclusion of a regional basketball championship game. The incident drew national notoriety and condemnation inside and outside San Diego, as well as significant punishment from the California Interscholastic Federation, which stripped Coronado of its championship and imposed severe sanctions on all Coronado athletic teams.
Some community in Coronado, unsurprisingly, did not agree with the criticism or punishment, arguing that there was no racial intent behind the tortilla-throwing and that students had been led astray by adults.
This led the school to try and appeal the punishment, which — as the U-T’s Kristen Taketa reported Tuesday — CIF ultimately upheld in deciding to maintain sanctions that applied specifically to the boys basketball program. CIF did, however, reverse its original decision to have those sanctions similarly applied to all Coronado high school athletics.
Now I am comfortable with the decision to remove the sanctions that were broadly imposed on all the school’s athletics because I thought it was a bit unfair to apply the punishment to student athletes that really didn’t seem to have any direct connection with what happened beyond sharing a school name.
I also think going to that extreme inherently put people in the community on the defensive and sent them into their bunkers, rendering them naturally more reluctant to engage in a discussion about why the incident was troubling for many.
I do not have an issue though with CIF maintaining the sanctions it imposed on Coronado’s boys basketball team, nor do I have a problem with them revoking the school’s championship.
Discussion about this whole incident, understandably, has overwhelmingly focused on race, racism and cultural awareness. In turn that has led to those defending Coronado to fixate on that topic.
This idea is well illustrated by Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey — one of the notable proponents arguing an injustice was perpetrated against Coronado — who immediately responded to the failed appeal Tuesday.
“This decision by CIF is entirely indefensible as it sets the precedent that all future wins in any sport by any team will be vacated if someone, even if they are und with the school or team, does something someone finds politically incorrect,” Bailey wrote on Facebook.
That argument embodies a lot of what I find so troubling about this whole affair, because the issues here were not entirely about political correctness, racial intent or a lack cultural awareness. In fact, and this circles back to the story I shared at the start of the column, the issue for me has actually been about how the incident relates to the spirit of youth athletics.
I love sports and am a huge believer in the life lessons kids get from playing youth sports, especially team sports. It’s a way to learn about oneself, others and the world outside, because youth athletics provide a fun experience that teaches people about teamwork, respect, ability, sportsmanship and self-control, among other things.
The issue I keep coming back to with Coronado is that putting aside debates about racial intent, or who brought the tortillas to a game, there were Coronado players who, it appears, threw objects at their opponent after the final whistle. That’s a problem, even if what was thrown wasn’t a tortilla but rather something as nondescript as a water bottle.
That’s not in the spirit of youth athletics, where one should learn to carry oneself with class, whether it’s in victory or defeat, and to treat your opponent with respect no matter how emotionally charged competition gets.
The punishment itself also gets at one of the lessons people are supposed to learn from team sports: individual behavior and acts of selfishness or loss of composure don’t only impact oneself but others as well.
In basketball if you lose control during a game and get a technical or flagrant foul, the entire team is punished because you are likely gifting points and a possession to the other team. You could make a similar comparison with something like unsportsmanlike conduct in football, where an automatic first down is awarded, or penalties in soccer and hockey, where the behavior can remove a player from the field or the ice and leave a team shorthanded.
Now I understand why that is not of comfort for the parents and players on the Coronado team who were not directly involved in this poor behavior. ittedly it’s a rough beat, and I don’t begrudge them for being upset about the punishment, as long as they can at least acknowledge what happened was inappropriate.
But even for those athletes who were not directly involved, this should be another valuable life lesson typically taught through team sports, and that’s the importance of leadership, setting a high standard and the necessity of every person holding their teammates able.
When you are part of team — be it athletic, academic or in a professional workplace — you will harbor responsibility for not just your behavior, but the behaviors of others on your team. If someone is acting inappropriately at work, you need to be quick to hold the person able and demand that he or she live up to whatever standard you set as an organization, because poor behavior will reflect poorly on all of you and can negatively impact the success of everyone.
It’s tough, but it’s life, and life lessons are what kids are supposed to get out of youth sports anyway.
