Steve Christilaw: Sometimes even homecoming queens play football; get used to it

There are days when you just have to wonder just what, exactly, is wrong with some people.

Are we only on our best behavior and do we only listen to the better angels of our nature when someone is watching?

There probably isn’t a scientific study out there to answer that question, but the anecdotal evidence points strongly to yes.

You have to believe in people, but dang, you can end up hanging your head in shame at some things our friends and neighbors say.

Still, as Michael Jackson once sang: “One bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl. Oh, I don’t care what they say, I don’t care what you heard.”

On the other hand, you have to take into consideration the wisdom poet Maya Angelou gave us, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

You can pick a topic, any topic whatsoever, to find an example of other members of the Family of Man saying something ugly, disrespectful and downright crude about someone else. Just read the online comment section on just about any news story. Ouch.

But face it, our friends and neighbors were doing this long before Facebook came along. Or AOL, for that matter. Ugliness was getting passed around long before the first kid tied two tin cans together with a heft of twine.

My job is to watch people putting themselves on the line for any number of reasons. Young athletes do it to represent their school or to support their friends who need a few extra bodies to make a team work. College athletes do it because it’s a way of paying the high price of an advanced education or because they harbor the slim hope of one day becoming a professional athlete. Professional athletes make it their job and, in some cases, they become millionaires doing it.

It feels like an eternity ago, but I once wrote a story about a young girl who turned out to play high school football back in the days when doing so made you a trailblazer.

I thought it took courage to put herself out there, and I felt it took an open mind and an open heart on the part of the school and the coaching staff to make it happen.

She never made it to varsity, but she did play junior varsity football as a linebacker. She wasn’t a starter, but I do remember her first game as a member of the traveling squad.

Her team had a long bus ride across Puget Sound to play the JV squad from Bainbridge High, which also meant there was an hourlong ferry ride.

As high school football debuts go, her first foray into the game was relatively uneventful. She was in on a couple tackles and did absolutely nothing to embarrass herself. And, frankly, she did better at her position than a few of the boys who played her spot during the game.

On the ferry ride home, I bought a cup of coffee from the concession stand (big, big mistake – ferry coffee in those days was used to take the chrome off trailer hitches) and did several laps around the boat to admire the lights shining across the water.

It’s amazing what you can overhear doing that.

There were pods of, mostly, parents sitting in different spots. Most of them were chatting about parent stuff.

But there was one mom incensed by the fact that a girl had played in her son’s football game. I’m certain she didn’t think she could be overheard by strangers, but neither did she care to keep her voice down, either.

The ugliness of what she was saying, the names she was calling this sophomore, would make a longshoreman blush.

People still say the same kinds of things. They just do it online under a pseudonym.

That memory has stuck with me. And I am reminded of it whenever I read stories like the ones I found just the other day.

Like the one from Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

Kaylee Foster, a senior, was crowned homecoming queen before the big game kicked off. She smiled, posed for pictures in her gown and tiara, then dashed off to put on her pads and helmet. By the time the game was over, she had kicked two field goals and booted the extra point that earned the win, at which time she was mobbed by teammates. Afterward they all posed for pictures at midfield, with Kaylee wearing her pads and the tiara.

There were stories out of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and South Plantation, Florida, where girls played varsity football as back-up quarterbacks.

Those stories brought out the ugliest comments.

Then there’s the story from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where the homecoming queen doubles as the starting cornerback on the varsity’s starting defense.

Jocelynn Wilson isn’t the first homecoming queen to wear shoulder pads, but she was wearing hers under her football jersey. Wilson explained to the camera that she plays football because she loves the game. That doesn’t make it easy, but it does make her want to work hard to be able to play.

And her coach admitted there was not a single player on the squad who outworked her over the summer getting ready for the season. And her teammates talked about how they respect her for putting in the hard work.

I think the nasty things people say about stories like these says absolutely nothing about the kids in the story and everything about the people leaving the comments.

The kids get it. The kids know why they’re playing the game and they appreciate the success they’re finding.

And most of all, they appreciate being a part of something bigger than themselves. They get something special out of being part of a team.