Last season, Jeff Hamlin and I made the trek to Troy to cover the Orange at Montgomery Central football game for the website. During the nearly 80-minute drive to one of the nicest and most modern high school campuses in North Carolina, Jeff and I spent the time recalling the best games in high school sports history in both central and western North Carolina in our younger days.
We also discussed past games in Appalachian State football history and of course, a guilty pleasure, discussing great matches in the annals of professional wrestling – especially the gimmick matches like a street fight or to the newer generation, TLC – Tables, Ladders, & Chairs. These matches always have something in common – settling a grudge between two combatants or teams that always involved weapons.
But in recent months, high school sports – especially football – have become nothing short of 80’s-era grudge matches involving real weapons, primarily guns. But these events weren’t settled in the squared circle or on the gridiron, instead they’re being waged in the stands, the concession areas, or in parking lots of high school football games.
According to statewide news reports, off-site grudges are being brought to the venues of high school football contests. Most likely, they’re completely unrelated to the games.
Back on September 12, the Southwest Edgecombe Cougars hosted the perennially powerful Tarboro Vikings in a non-conference game. With the Vikings leading 14-0 in the third quarter, a fight broke out at the concession stand followed by a gunshot. The stadium was evacuated, and the game was called by coaches’ agreement with Tarboro taking the win. When the dust settled, two juveniles were injured. A suspect was arrested in Raleigh the following day and charged with attempted murder.
Roughly a month prior at the Bulldog Bash football scrimmage at Southeast Raleigh High School, a grudge match became a battle royal as multiple fights broke out leading to shots fired. Out of caution, the event was abruptly canceled. Despite arriving on scene in a matter of minutes, Raleigh Police officers could not locate or identify a single suspect. As of this column, no leads were ever developed into the identification of any suspects.
In 2023, a volatile situation at Lumberton High School saw the arrests of four adults and seven minors ranging from the ages of 15-22 as gunfire came from the stadium’s parking lot during the third quarter of the Pirates’ loss to Red Springs. The game was halted but resumed the next day without any fans.
In all incidents at each facility, security personnel in the form of on-duty and off-duty law enforcement officers, the mandatory enforcement of a clear bag policy, and the use of magnetometers (aka metal detectors) were in place for all incoming patrons.
When I worked in the daily grind of Corrections, I was often tasked with duties that you would see a law enforcement officer perform at a sporting event. Some of these duties you might not see.
For nine years, I was the front entrance officer at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner. If you attempted to enter the facility, you had to subject to screening through a walk-through (and potentially a hand-held) metal detector, your effects are scanned through an x-ray machine and potentially undergo screening through a drug interdiction machine known as an ion spectrometer. While OCS might not have the budget for the last two devices, every person coming to a sporting event should be under the careful eye of a law enforcement officer scanning you with the help of a metal detector – in hopes that you are not bringing prohibited items to a high school football game.
If assigned as a Compound officer (an intermediary officer that provides response between the supervisors and the housing unit officers & staff), I would be assigned to secure the fences, gates, & doors along the facility’s exterior and perimeter, report discrepancies, and rectify them. I imagine that school resource officers perform similar duties each day around the properties of their assigned school. At any property with athletic fields near forested areas, it takes time to perform a proper security sweep. I would imagine sweeps of those areas are conducted frequently to identify & locate weapons, controlled substances or any other forms of contraband – or to identify and remove potential intruders – that could be hidden from view, which could pose a threat to public safety.
It’s safe to say that our local law enforcement officers have their work cut out for them to keep everyone safe. They all should be commended for the work that they do.
Back to the original matter. If you have beef with someone, take care of your business somewhere outside of a property owned by Orange County Schools. If you have any true sense of logic, handle your business free from any form of aggression. It takes a real person to settle a situation free from violence than to just go straight towards the nasty stuff. Yet another reason why DARE needs to come back to the classroom to teach adolescents on how to handle their affairs without the need for violent tendencies.
In our area, people want to see Cedar Ridge and Orange take on each other, or their opponents, at the sites of competition. They want to see the Red Wolves and Panthers achieve victory by attaining athletic superiority and they don’t want to see people settle their differences through violence while a sporting event is in progress.
The truth is that violence solves absolutely nothing. As a result of one’s inability to control their behavior, someone is going to the hospital, jail, or potentially, the morgue. There’s going to be an investigation, an arrest, and a slew of court proceedings. There could possibly be a funeral, but there will be a definite loss of something or someone. Whether it’s a jail or prison sentence, probation, fines, restitution, or hospital bills – the cost will be great to the perpetrators and even greater to those that bear the loss.
The attempt to prove one’s supremacy over someone else will do more damage to them than it will do to their adversary. It only proves that it’s best to eliminate the grudge through calmer methods before the grudge finds a way to eliminate you in some form or fashion.
