Friday Nights Not the Same

Violence at Football Games Imperils a Rite of Youth

At Mount Vernon High School in suburban New York, the Knights played their homecoming game amid silence, the contest decided in an empty stadium on a Friday morning last month because a hometown man had been shot dead in the city of the team's rival the week before.

At Goldsboro High School in North Carolina last year, the Cougars played their homecoming game to an audience of parents only. Rumors had been flying that kids were planning to fight.

This week, after the accidental shooting of a 17-year-old girl at an Oct. 28 game, Annapolis High School has moved its traditional Friday night homecoming game to this afternoon. At tomorrow's homecoming parade, marchers will reach the City Dock and then just go home. The game will have already been played.

The cherished ritual of Friday night high school football -- hot chocolate, marching bands and blankets under the lights -- has long been as sure a sign of fall as the changing of the leaves. But this season, a series of shootings and stabbings during and after the games threatens to upend the tradition here and across the country.

School officials in Anne Arundel County have rescheduled remaining Friday night games this year for times when fewer people will attend. Games have been played at twilight, on Saturday afternoons and, in the case of today's Annapolis contest, after school on a Thursday.

The changes have not been widely embraced among parents at Annapolis High, some of whom were in an uncharitable mood last Friday after rearranging their lives and fighting rush-hour traffic to attend a game at North County High School that had been moved up two hours, to 5:15 p.m.

"The bottom line is, they're totally blocking parent involvement," said Jan Schwartz, the mother of Panthers linebacker Jon Schwartz, who was seated with some like-minded parents in the visitors stands. "If somebody is going to bring a gun, they're going to do it if it's dark or if it's light."

The kickoff times are wreaking havoc with schedules. Parents have had to take time off from work. Referees have had to shuffle assignments. The new varsity game times have affected junior varsity teams, which now play at odd hours. Coaches are grumbling about lost revenue at the gates and concession stands; attendance was off by one-third at last Friday's Annapolis game.

"I had to get off two hours early to come to the game," said Sheree Brown-Queen, a juvenile probation officer who was at the Annapolis game Friday to cheer nephew Justin Brown, a Panthers safety.

A former Annapolis High School cheerleader, Brown-Queen said she remembers seeing her mother in the stands at every game, and she intends to do the same for her nephew: "It's important to kids to see people there at the game who support them."

There have been 10 shootings and stabbings related to high school football games around the country this fall, according to Kenneth Trump, a Cleveland school-safety consultant who maintains a database of violent incidents at schools.

Most of the violence has occurred before, after or outside of games. Three students have died, all in postgame altercations in parking lots. One was 15-year-old Kanisha Neal, who was stabbed to death in a brawl that broke out between two groups of girls after a Sept. 23 game between Blake and Sherwood high schools in Montgomery County. The others: a 17-year-old male shot after an August exhibition game in Miami, and another 17-year-old male shot outside a mall after a game in Richardson, Texas.