This year, new expectations are in place for football games and other athletic events.
Students younger than high school age must be accompanied by a parent or guardian at all times. Additionally, no outside food or drink, backpacks or large purses, animals or pets, or athletic balls are allowed inside a stadium during an event. Re-entry is forbidden and loitering in the parking lot of the stadium is not permitted after events.
Junior Principal Kyle Devine said these guidelines will have a positive impact on the environment.
“I think something that people don’t necessarily see is the supervision that it takes,” Devine said.
Devine said the hill where the middle schoolers play during the games is often littered with trash by the end of the night. With a lack of custodians, cleaning the hill becomes the supervisors’ responsibility.
“You’ve got 4,000 people here, 6 principals and a couple of police officers,” Devine said. “I think by having the adults there, it’s going to hold them accountable.”
The no re-entry rule, as well as no outside food or drink rule, is to make sure people don’t bring alcohol into the stadium, or grab things in their cars that could be unsafe.
“The re-entry thing is less for our students, because they pretty much stay in the student section. I would say that it’s more for the general public,” Junior Principal Kyle Devine said.
Varsity cheerleader Ava Frizzell, sophomore, says that she’s seen a lot of trash and kids younger than high school running around, but it doesn’t cause a distraction for her.
Frizzell thinks that the no re-entry rule is unfair for students.
“Say you need to get something from your car or you meet someone out there, and you can’t get in even though you paid,” Frizzell said.
Isabelle Eisele, junior, has attended multiple football games and said some of the new guidelines are reasonable while others are unnecessary.
“Some of them make sense, like those younger than high school should be accompanied by a parent or guardian because the middle schoolers tend to be a little wild at games,” Eisele said. “But stuff like no re-entry or no large purses is a little interesting.”
