Friday Nights Not the Same

Before this fall, the last fatality at a high school football game was in November 2003 in Sugar Land, Texas, according to Trump's database.

High school football is a magnet for violence, according to coaches, principals and security officials. In many suburbs, the game is the biggest event in town on Friday nights. It draws an audience far beyond the school community, a group that sometimes includes members of gangs. Team rivalries can fuel tempers. A packed stadium provides an ideal stage for committing a violent act and then slipping into a crowd.

"The people who can walk through the gate for a Friday night football game include many individuals who could not simply walk into the schoolhouse in the middle of the school day," Trump said.

Eugene Peterson, an Anne Arundel school board member, called the Annapolis shooting "a wake-up call." He disagrees with those who dismiss the case as an accident. "With kids and guns, there's no accidents," he said. "So let's not call this an accident."

It was definitely quiet when the Mount Vernon Knights played their oldest rival, the New Rochelle Huguenots, said Ric Wright, Mount Vernon's coach. "There was no one there except for the police," he said. Players had to help the referees move the down markers. Mount Vernon ultimately lost, 40-16, despite its theoretical home-field advantage.

New Rochelle students learned their team had won only after the game was over, in an announcement on the school intercom.

"Everybody just kind of looked at each other," said Eileen Fener, 17, a New Rochelle senior who had planned to attend. "Nobody cheered. Nobody knew what to do."

School officials in both Anne Arundel and Montgomery have tightened security in response to the violence. Montgomery had to contend with two deaths within a week. In the second case, a 23-year-old Germantown man was beaten with a miniature baseball bat a block away from a Sept. 16 Seneca Valley High School football game. It is unclear whether either the victim or the suspects in the case attended the game, said schools spokesman Brian Edwards.

Additional police and school staff members have been assigned to remaining games in both counties.

No tickets are being sold after halftime at games in Anne Arundel, and no one who leaves the stadium is allowed to return. Starting most games at twilight means "we're going to be able to look at them and eyeball them as they're walking into the stadium" to better judge who might pose a threat, said Roy Skiles, assistant superintendent of Anne Arundel schools.

When the Annapolis High homecoming game was moved from Friday to Thursday, it was too late to reschedule the traditional pregame parade. School officials have optimistically renamed it the Victory Parade.

And if the Panthers lose?

"That's a good question," said Matt Vollono, 17, the Panthers quarterback. "It puts a little damper on the parade, I guess."