Additional reporting by Veda Yama and Pratham Valluri.
The competitive atmosphere surrounding sports has always been one of the main calling cards, but it can boil over, leading to unsportsmanlike conduct. These acts can range from parents yelling at referees to fans taunting the cheer team. Sometimes, unsportsmanlike behavior can become more serious, including physical violence, endangering students and other spectators.
“Last year, we had some kids come from San Bruno,” said Principal Valerie Arbizu. “There was a gang scuffle outside of our gate. That’s the most violent thing I’ve seen at a game.”
While behavior like these have occurred before, its continued presence has forced administration to take action in order to minimize the potential for future damage.
In previous years, students from other schools could get in for free with their student ID card. This year, the San Mateo Union High School District principals discussed this issue at a district meeting. At Aragon, Arbizu implemented a new policy where non-Aragon students have to pay to attend games.
“Four dollars can … hit pause for some students who [would think], ‘Do I really want to go?’” Arbizu said. “Are you going because your friends are playing? Or because you want to start something with people … there?”
The behavior of middle school students also influenced the district’s decision to create a new rule that those under high school age must be accompanied by an adult.
“We had middle school students coming in who were unattended and were being rambunctious and difficult to work with,” Arbizu said.
Although games are gathering places for fans, they can provide the environment for conflicts to escalate.
“Students have a feeling of invincibility when [they’re] at a different school and nobody really knows them,” said athletic director Steve Sell.
Due to the lack of seating on bleachers, Aragon was unable to accommodate the huge influx of people who came to the homecoming game against Hillsdale on Nov. 4.
“When you have an event where not everybody has a seat, then sometimes that can lead to behavioral issues,” Arbizu said. “We noticed an uptick in behaviors that were leading to larger arguments and fights when we had larger groups of students hanging out.”
“[We] … had a staff member … insert himself in the fight to try to break things up and he got hurt”
The administration anticipated up to 1200 people to attend the game. However, Aragon’s stadium can only hold 650 people, with 500 seats on the home side and 150 seats on the visitor’s side.
Ultimately, the game was moved to San Mateo High School, which had a stadium that had 1700 seats on the home side and 1500 seats on the visitor’s side. For the junior varsity and varsity football games, a total of 2656 spectators attended.
To ensure safety, four police officers, eight security guards and administrators and teachers from both Aragon and Hillsdale were present. Despite this increased security presence, a fight broke out between non-Aragon students by the snack shack during the game.
“[We] … had a staff member … insert himself in the fight to try to break things up and he got hurt,” Arbizu said. “And so that’s part of why the new [attendance] policy is in place, because at our Hillsdale game, [the students who fought] didn’t need to be there.”
“Students have a feeling of invincibility when [they’re] at a different school and nobody really knows them”
Sophomore Dalton Kane was near the fight when it broke out.
“There were a couple guys going at it,” Kane said. “It looked like something happened between them. I heard some people egging it on. I heard there was a knife but I don’t know if it was true or not.” (Editorial note: There was no knife).
Some believe that incidents like the one that occurred at the homecoming game put the effectiveness of the attendance policy in question.
“I think the students are going to act the same way regardless of how many there are,” said sophomore Naveen Schwarzkopf. “I don’t think that depriving students of the chance to watch games is the right way to go about solving the issue.”
The attendance policies at this year’s football games will apply to basketball games.
“Our gym has better capacity,” Arbizu said. “[But we still] … have to be really careful.”
The administration hopes that stricter attendance management and security would encourage students to conduct themselves in the proper way at future athletic events.
