Act Like You’ve Been There

I posted this about 18 hours ago and I know a few people have read this now. Something occurred to me and I should’ve said this from the start: My views are my own. I’m a volunteer who likes to write. For all I know the people at East High are rolling their eyes and thinking, “This dude needs to keep his thoughts to himself.” If that’s the case, I apologize. The thoughts expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Green Bay East High School or the fine people who work there. Enjoy!

I’m honestly not sure where to start with this one. Do I even bother writing this? Should I just keep my mouth shut? Am I just another youth sports parent adding to the noise? Is this all just sour grapes? Am I a loser? Probably. But here goes anyway.

Full disclosure: My oldest daughter just graduated from Green Bay East High School in May. My son, Andy, is the starting running back on the varsity squad. My youngest daughter is an incoming freshman at East. Just registered today, in fact. Proud to have three young Red Devils. I’ve been a part of the Performing Arts Parents group for four years and counting. I’m the President of the Green Bay East High School Gridiron Club. I’m starting my second season as the team’s volunteer statistician. I took a class and everything! I use my tech background to assist with obtaining and editing game film. If you cut me I bleed red. I mean…we all do, obviously, but in this case I mean East red. I say none of this because I feel I deserve a pat on the back or some moral dessert. I say it to stress the fact that I’m extremely biased. That said, I don’t think what I’m about to write is unjustified.

I’m also fiercely protective and loyal. When I see injustice against our kids my blood boils. My dad taught me a lot of things, but in this case I think of him constantly preaching to us about the value of public schools. How a good public high school is the community’s gathering place. I live in Allouez. My kids go to East. I would have it no other way. The east side is our home and we love it. We’re damn proud to be an East High family.

I know the reputation East High has among many people in our area who know nothing about our school. I heard a wise man recently say, “People outside of here think that East High is a pipeline to prison.” I’ve never heard it said so succinctly. I’ve seen the looks on people’s faces and heard their replies when I say my kids go to East. To say that many turn up their noses is an understatement. Responses vary from benign to outrageous. I’ve heard one of these people – one who proudly wears their Christianity on their sleeve, by the way – say word for word, “I pay for private school so my kids don’t have to go to school with all the blacks, Mexicans, and Hmongs.” My response is that is exactly why I DO send my kids to school there. So they don’t end up like your “I won’t shut up about how much I love Jesus but my actions are unquestionably anti-Christlike” racist ass. Because understanding other cultures makes us all less ignorant. East is teaching them more about the world than anything they’re getting from a book. East looks the way I wish the rest of the world looked. Everyone is welcome and celebrated. It’s a truly special place. I didn’t go to a school like East. I wanted my kids to have a different experience.

While I’m on a roll, here’s another problem I have: People who transfer their kids to other schools purely for sports. Private schools that poach the best athletes from public schools for athletics. You recruited the best kids in the area to come to your school and then turned around and beat up on the schools from whom you took those kids on your way to a state title? I’m not impressed. Quite the contrary. I’m disgusted. What are we teaching our kids? That taking the easy way out and becoming just another cog in someone else’s machine is better than staying and helping to build the machine yourself? School sports used to be about civic pride…at least that’s the way I always viewed it. The kids from my neighborhood versus the kids from your neighborhood. Now the kids from my neighborhood leave after middle school and jump somewhere else because the grass is supposedly greener there. Because they won a conference title last year or because more scouts might see you? Nah. We stay and build something. East might not win state titles or even conference titles (yet), but our kids learn how to fight through adversity instead of run from it. Because the lessons they should be learning from team sports are far more important than what you see in the standings.

Despite all of this, I believe East is a football program on the rise. Our Head Coach, Niko Sila, is a force of positivity, love, and encouragement the likes of which I’ve rarely seen. The job of Head Football Coach at East High is a job unlike most in the area, although I suspect the coaches at the other Green Bay public high schools face similar challenges. East has the highest rate of kids below the poverty level of any school in the county. That means Coach Niko and his staff and a great community of supporters – one that I’m proud to consider myself a part of – are constantly finding creative ways to make sure kids are taken care of and have what they need to compete. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend time with these kids. Despite the obstacles they’ve had to overcome they’re some of the hardest working, kindest, funniest, most inspiring, coolest kids you’ll ever meet. And yeah, I feel like some of them look at me – the old white dude wandering around the team room and the equipment room looking for cameras – with suspicion, and I understand and respect that. Trust has to be earned. I have a difficult time maintaining civility when I hear people talk negatively about East when they’ve never set foot in the place or taken the time to meet even one of these kids. That’s ignorance. The amount of love in that building and on that football team is the fuel that drives me to be better for them every day.

Knowing all of this, when I see our kids being treated in a way that I consider unfair I can’t just sit quietly and watch. I don’t like putting officials on blast, and I won’t do it to other schools or students, but while gathering stats from Friday night’s game I found a play from our first offensive drive of the season that perfectly encapsulates the East High football experience. By the way, I didn’t want to be guilty of using any of East’s film to make my argument here, so the film you’re seeing was taken with my phone while streaming the game on NFHS on my computer. What I’m showing you here is publicly available to anyone with a subscription. I didn’t bend any rules or use privilege to obtain this. While you watch the video, keep an eye on the quarterback after he throws the pass. Then when the camera moves, turn your attention toward the end zone.

Two obvious things happen on this play beside the perfectly placed pass thrown by quarterback Phixen Chang to wide receiver Matuta Msafiri, who makes a beautiful catch and run for the touchdown that unfortunately eluded the camera. First, a defender hits Phixen WELL after the pass leaves his hands. I mean, he’s 3-4 steps away from Phixen when the ball is released. He continues full speed into the middle of Phixen’s back, never slowing down, and hits Phixen so hard his neck snaps back before his body slams into the ground. This type of blatant late hit might get a player kicked out of an NFL game. Ask Charles Martin. Old school Packer fans know who I’m talking about. In this case the referee standing right there watching doesn’t even reach for a flag. It’s a sad state of affairs when the NFL – whose safety record is questionable at best – values player safety more than WIAA officials.

On the other end of this play, Matuta celebrates his touchdown by spinning the ball and turning with outstretched arms to share the fun with his teammates. This egregious act of youthful exuberance earned him a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Officials love to throw unsportsmanlike conduct flags on Green Bay East players. This particular ref makes a real show of it, too. He lobs the flag straight up in the air, then holds his arm up for everyone to see like Larry Bird in the NBA 3-Point Contest. When asked the reason for the flag they repeatedly tell the coaches, “They need to act like they’ve been there before.” I’m the team statistician and I’ve seen damn near every down of East football for the past five seasons and I’ve got news for you: Matuta hadn’t been there before (he was there three times Friday night, though). This was his first varsity high school touchdown. Please, tell me how you’re supposed to act like you’ve been there before WHEN YOU’VE NEVER BEEN THERE BEFORE??? Same thing happened when Demarion Brown – a 15-year-old sophomore at the time – scored his first touchdown last season. These kids have the audacity to spin the ball on the ground and they get penalized 15 yards. Never mind that their quarterback just got blindsided and knocked flat on his face five seconds earlier long after the ball left his hands and nobody in a striped shirt batted an eye, much less reached for a flag. What message are you sending these kids? You’re OK with our quarterback taking a wildly unnecessary, dirty-as-hell hit while he’s completely defenseless but there’s no way you’re going to let a 17-year-old kid have some fun and perform a harmless celebration that offends absolutely nobody. Where are your priorities?

Of course, the argument then becomes, “They got flagged for it last season. They should know better.” Turn on an NFL game. We live in Green Bay. You’re reading a post about high school football. You must watch the NFL. How many times do you see players spinning the ball during an average game? I’m a nerd, so I used AI to help me with this study. In Week One of the 2024 NFL season there was an average of three ball spins per game. That’s approximately 48 ball spins that week. There were ZERO taunting penalties called in that same week. Of course, I’m trusting that AI is correct, but even if those numbers are slightly off, I think my point has been made. These boys – not just at East, but at high schools everywhere – are simply imitating what they see their heroes do on TV every week. An innocuous touchdown celebration. If you have a bigger problem with a ball spin than you do with that late hit, do us all a favor and either re-examine your priorities or stop officiating.

The next thing you might say if you’re trying to defend this conduct is, “That was just one play.” But it’s not just one play. It happens on a weekly basis. It got so frustrating last year that I helped compile an entire list of videos of incidents involving our players. In nearly every situation, our kids are responding to something that someone did to them first.

Last year in one game my son came home with his ankle so black and blue I can’t believe he could walk on it. When I asked what happened he said, “Some kid jumped on it.” So I looked. Andy ripped off a 23-yard run – the best of his young high school career – and the kid who finally brought him down held his feet when he got up, then fell back down with all of his upper body weight directly on them. When he got up he once again grabbed a leg and gave it a hard pull for good measure before walking away. Even if Andy wanted to celebrate he couldn’t because this kid injured his foot in a post-play tantrum that was neither necessary nor sportsmanlike. His senseless actions messed up Andy for the rest of that game and the next one. Did a flag get thrown? Unnecessary roughness? Unsportsmanlike conduct? Nope. Did East get two players kicked out of that same game for “unsportsmanlike conduct”? Yes. Was the dreaded ball spin involved? Yes. The following week Andy had an 8-yard run early in a game and the kid who tackled him – listed at 315 pounds in the program – shoved him back down when he tried to get up. Then our starting center ran to his defense and shoved that kid back and got flagged 15 yards for unnecessary roughness. Should he not defend his teammate? Should he have let the 315 pound lineman from the other team bully the 175 pound running back? I’d much rather have the kid willing to stand up for his teammate and you should, too. But he gets punished and people roll their eyes and think, “There goes East being East again.” I have plenty of stories like that and the video footage to back it up, but you get my point. If I had a dollar for every time they caught the kid from East who retaliated instead of the kid from the other team who started it I’d have enough money to buy a 4K camera so I can show it to you in super high definition. But East is always the bad guy. Why do you think that is?

I’m not saying our kids are saints. Far from it. We wouldn’t want a team full of saints anyway. This is football. I’m sure some of our East kids can run their mouths with the worst of them. Our coach is constantly preaching self-control and discipline, but a person can only get pushed so far. When the other team is constantly chirping in your ear because East has been the perennial conference doormat and this is what they believe to be an easy W and a team they can bully, and so-called fans are shouting racial slurs from the stands (happens more than anyone would care to know), and the adults on the field who are supposed to be out there making sure the game is fair seem like they’re against you, too…what do you expect these kids to do? They fight back. They’re kids. They’re not supposed to have self-control mastered yet. Adults are, and much of the time it’s the adults in the stadium who are driving these kids past the point of frustration.

I feel for high school officials. I really do. There’s a reason so many football games are played on Thursday nights now instead of Fridays. They can’t even find enough officials to work a full Friday night of games. It’s a thankless job. On a good night nobody notices you. You have to love the sport and have skin thicker than a rhino to even consider it. I applaud the good officials. Like in so many other cases, I believe that it’s a small minority of people making the rest look bad. That said, I hoped this year would be the start of something better. Instead, we got more of the same bullshit on our first offensive drive of the season. We had 15 penalties for 145 yards last week. I’m not saying many of them weren’t justified. I’m saying you think you know East before they even set foot on the field and you decide you’re going to lay down the law with our boys and it’s not fair. You make us the villains before the ball is even kicked off.

Last week in a parent meeting Coach Niko asked the parents to keep the negativity away. Only shout positivity and encouragement during the games. I shouted so much encouragement that my voice still hasn’t recovered and the game was four days ago. The further that game progressed, the harder it was to keep my cool. I looked over at other parents in the stands understandably screaming in anger at the officials and I had a hard time not doing the same thing myself. I kept hearing Niko in my head saying, “The boys can hear you when you do that. You’re just feeding them negativity.” I kept it to myself. I really can’t take another autumn of watching games like this. Our kids, coaches, and parents are trying our damnedest to show you a level of respect that you haven’t shown us or proven that you deserve. Why don’t you for once do the same for our kids and for East?

You know. Just act like you’ve been there.

The photo at the top of this post was taken by a phenomenal young sports photographer named Malia Olp-Thompson at Olp Optics Photography. She will be taking photos of our kids for the entire season. While she’s only been working with us briefly, I can already see that her photos capture not only the game, but the spirit and soul of East High Football. The Gridiron Club can’t wait for you to see more. I hope she doesn’t mind that I stole one of her amazing photos for this post.