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 Across campus on the other side of Pershing, Stagg High School ís football field became the scene of anarchy after a horrific crime. It was a tragedy that never got the attention it deserved, and quickly will be forgotten like the lessons learned in our freshman year classes. The national media picked up the story and with video evidence this crime had its 15 minutes of fame. This 15 minutes is the most disastrous account, completely butchering and taking away from what really happened. What happened after the crime makes no sense and the portrayal of what has happened also makes no sense.
On Saturday, September 2nd with the a few minutes left at a pop Warner football game featuring the Stockton Bears and Riverbank Redskins all hell broke loose. There are many different accounts of what happened after Riverbank assistant coach Corey Petero ran unto the field with his best Bruce Lee impersonation, heaving thirteen-year-old Brain Wood to the ground. The video of that play is everywhere, from Good Morning America to PTI, CNN and Rome is Burning, oh and let us not forget the wonderful world of the internet. The video does not lie, what the eyes perceive is surreal; in a sick and twisted way so uncomfortable one can easily just chuckle at the insanity of perception. A coach in a full out sprint, karate maneuvers a kid to the ground, yet there is more to this story than meets the eye. The true tragedy will never be talked about let alone brought out by the mainstream.
What happened after the incident has only been mentioned as a twenty-minute brawl by the mass media, which took this story and ran with it creating an unfair monster of just one side. As a journalist you are thought to be able to decipher personal emotions from a story without ever being biased. As a pop Warner football coach who coaches against Petero and the Redskins, this tragedy hit too close to home and as irony would have it, with the Redskins being our next opponent and the emphasis on winning at a all times high, scouting is critical to success so I took the journey to Riverbank.
“Welcome to the City of Riverbank, a progressive, growing community in the heart of California’s Central Valley. Blending the new with the old, Riverbank maintains a sense of harmony with the surrounding rural and agricultural heritage”. This is how the official website of Riverbank explains itself. Words are not enough to get an understanding of the people who were involved in an all out brawl over a pop Warner football game. The character of a community could be best understood by the way it handles tragedy. Sitting next to and talking to the people of the community another story came out. There is no question the Stockton Bears have a reputation of being dirty and physical. After all would you honestly expect anything else from Stockton?
This stereotype surely added to Petero’s rage. One must wonder how much stereotypes added to this injustice. Petero had two son the Junior Varsity team. More than one Riverbank parent clearly stated that one of Petero’s sons ruptured his spleen due to the dirty play of the Bears. His second son also suffered broken or bruised ribs. With that said no one condemned Petero’s actions but on the other hand no one supported his actions. It was clear that the people of Riverbank were not going to judge one of their own based on one act of lunacy and that is respectable of a community not to leave one of its own in the middle of all this chaos. The ultimate shock was the brawl afterward. The ultimate atrocity was the brawl afterward. It is the brawl that truly makes this a sad, sad story.
A real lovely older lady took up conversation with me and went in detail about the moments after Peteroís insanity.
The Bear fans and parents wanted Redskin blood and did not care whose blood as long as it was someone from Riverbank. The women told me about her son-in-law who is a coach for the varsity team. A few Bear fans who were big adults started coming at the varsity team. The coach put himself in the middle of the kids and adults trying in vain to explain that they are just kids, they have nothing to do with this. The Redskin coach tried to do the humane thing but was punished for it. The Bear fans did not care about humanity but their rage at what they had just conceived took over. The coach got jumped in front of his kids. It is sickening to make sense of what these kids just perceived right in front of them. Their coach being beaten up for doing the right thing, their coach being forced to either defend himself and fight back or take a beating. Luckily beating up the coach was enough for the Bear fans and they stopped short of going after the varsity team. Thankfully the coach’s courage canceled out the other coach’s mishap. This is one of many stories told by the people of Riverbank. Petero had jumped the fence and was long gone but what he created will live in infamy in the eyes of all those left behind.
Those he left behind were the kids. The media never took time from its busy life to examine the side effects this will have on the kids involved. The psychological damage and the savagery that was showcased that uneventful day will play tricks in the minds of the kids involved. These kids learned that fighting fire with fire is the right thing to do. Revenge, vengeance and losing control is ok. In a time of intense insanity those who tried to do the right thing and stop the brawl for happening got punished for it. These kids from both teams saw the cooler heads do not prevail. That you must fight to protect yourself with fists and not words, that one wrong, idiot move translates to many more wrong, idiot moves.
Football is a brute sport, it is controlled violence and that is the realities of the sport. It is also the single greatest sport and throughout history physical competition has been part of civilized societies. Football helps create discipline, teamwork, hard work and respectable men out of boys. Football helps its athletes control their rage and therefore themselves. Everything football is supposed to teach was lost that day. Yes the actions of one man started the melee but it took more than one person to forever ruin the true essence and beauty of a simple gladiator type game. One mans mistake should have not accounted for so much loss.
There is no doubt what Petero did was disgraceful disgusting and simply put the worst case fear of anyone involved with youth sports but what the kids experienced afterward could almost be argued is worst than Peteroís blunder. Sure there is a beast within all of us but it is how we control it that makes and breaks our character. Innocence was lost that day, and kids saw their parents and adults act like complete barbarians and show the true colors of our society. These kids will grow up and pass down the idea of not being able to control the savagery within all humans, continuing the cycle. These kids saw that the right thing was not to turn the other cheek and come together as humans with words and support for one person’s act of lunacy. Instead people took sides and people from both sides became like gangs and cave men. Football controls this savage notion and helps us put it in a box. When football loses its control and chaos conforms the game, than the true beauty of such an innocent game is lost. Corey Petero might have started the fire but the rest of us added to the flames and for those that tried to do the right thing, well they have the biggest burn marks. And for the kids, they were unfortunately burned alive. This is a scar that the people of Riverbank will have to deal with. It is truly sad because for one day I was part of a community watching youth football. I was in the eye of the people involved in this atrocity. What I saw was the people involved were like anyone else I know. In fact the people of Riverbank were helpful, polite and good to me even though I was wearing the logo and colors of their opponents. Before I left, I asked two gentlemen and a lady who were sitting together for directions. They went out of their way, even writing the directions down for me and kept putting a smile on my face with their clever sense of humors. In the eve of an atrocity you could see the strength of one community and it gave me hope. One act of lunacy became a firestorm but in time the people of Riverbank will recover and take the lessons learned and hopefully pass them down. After talking to three Riverbank adults while walking to my car I realized the people of Riverbank have understood the true atrocity and by knowledge the cycle can be broken. Besides the Redskins now have bigger problems to deal with. The Redskins play the Tracy Raiders this week and it will be fitting to see how they will handle their first loss of the season.
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