COMMENTARY BY ANDREW SPELLMAN AND SEAN MANNING
On Wednesday, we released the second episode of our brand new podcast, Best of 7.
When we were conceiving this new form of communicating with the local sports world, we decided it would be best to set it up as a continually heated set of topics, going from recaps of recent events to opinions that have the potential to get people talking, as well as communicating and debating with us.
And this week, we got that, but not in the way we had hoped.
Andrew’s over generalization and our lengthy review of the Clay-Battelle fan base was taken in a way we didn’t intend. Listening back, are we surprised we upset a lot of folks? No. But as two people who love their responsibilities at your local newspaper, we want to clear the air.
Why Clay-Battelle was under the microscope
First, it’s worth looking at the topic we were talking about. By no means did we mean to make the entire take about C-B’s fans. It began as a conversation about a problem that’s permeating the sports world: Over-reacting, rude fans are, frankly, ruining games for referees and the 14- to 18-year-olds who are playing.
The reason Clay-Battelle became a target of this conversation is simply because both of us have been to the rivalry games against Trinity where a fan was ejected and crowd behavior has been worse than, say, a game with Hundred or Valley-Wetzel. We both know rivalry games get heated, but we haven’t seen fans ejected at Morgantown-University games. Is there a fair share of smack talk going on at other rivalry games? Yes, absolutely, but in our experience, there’s been no harsh language spewed at these games.
Second, Andrew realizes he was loose with his words and completely over-generalized the Clay-Battelle fanbase. When he said, “They’re the worst I’ve experienced,” he should have been more pointed that only some fans were the subject of that statement. For that, he’d like to clarify he meant the fans who take high school sports too seriously and want to vicariously live through high school athletes.
Third, and we think the most important thing here, we’ve received a mixed bag of reactions. Although the majority is understandably, “Why would you say this about us?”, others have been either inviting us to come to other games where fans aren’t going to be rowdy, or understanding of why we said that. They’re there to watch the game, not listen to fans scream at referees who are getting paid next to nothing to help young players develop in a sport they love.
We know what Clay-Battelle means to those in the western end of the county and what C-B athletics means to alumni, parents, coaches and current athletes.
The bigger picture
The point of that podcast segment wasn’t to hammer Clay-Battelle for seven minutes. It was to start a conversation about unruly parents and fans at games, and it’s unfortunate our only experience of this has been at Clay-Battelle-Trinity Christian games this year. The conversation was fresh due to an incident that happened just last Monday. We know each school has its rotten apples, but there are plenty of ways to handle them without joining them in poor behavior: Ignore it, report it to the proper folks who will tell an official, or just turn the other cheek and let them get ousted organically.
We love going to Blacksville to cover games. We enjoy working with your coaches. We’ll both be back at Clay-Battelle, we aren’t going anywhere and we hope that if you ever disagree with us that you’ll be encouraged to approach us to have a conversation. We thank those of you who listened to Best of 7 in the first place, called in to air your grievances or to listen to our side of the story. Those conversations help us all grow and understand one another, and in a time when the media is constantly in hot water, we hope you, the reader, will keep us accountable if you feel we’re in the wrong. We’d love to talk to you about it.
We hope you’ll stick with us and keep reading and listening.
