Game canceled, class still in session

Sometimes adults act badly. Then others have to explain that behavior to kids.

Some adults in the Highland district picked up their torches and pitchforks last week when Barberton decided to cancel its football game against the Hornets, putting Highland’s homecoming in jeopardy.

Rumors began to swirl last Tuesday as social media posts circulated an email from Barberton head football coach Tony Gotto — to whom I am somehow related by marriage, but whom I have never met. Gotto told his players and their families that the Magics would not play at Highland last Friday because of a lack of healthy players.

Full disclosure, my first instinct was to call shenanigans. Barberton had just played three consecutive competitive contests, including the Magics’ lone win of the season. The other two were losses by one and four points.

The one-point loss, though, was to the same Tallmadge team that one week earlier lost 62-0 at Highland. The numbers did not look good for the Magics — available players or likely score.

So, for one of those reasons, the Barberton coaches and administrators kicked the can. The two sides had widely differing accounts of what happened next, but what everyone agrees on is that there was no football game.

The bad behavior on Highland’s side came in the form of social media posts — some ugly, considering this was about a game contested by children.

One poster suggested remembering Barberton’s decision when other Highland teams played Barberton teams in the future. Because what good parent doesn’t tell their kid to take out the actions of adults on kids?

This sort of reaction was not exactly the exception to the rule. Thankfully, though, it was the minority. Cooler heads eventually prevailed and a cooler homecoming fiesta emerged.

Before that, though, my son — an impressionable 11-year-old Highland kid not understanding a lot of what was going on — had questions. And, as kids’ questions tend to be, they were good ones.

“Won’t Barberton’s kids who are left get to play a lot more?”

That’s a great question. And yes, they would have. But if what Barberton was saying was true — and for the moment, I’m still trying to give the Magics’ brass the benefit of the doubt, no matter how little I want to — the kids who were left were mostly freshmen and sophomores.

Those kids would have trouble competing with Highland’s ninth- and 10th-graders, let alone a varsity team that has destroyed everything in its path this fall.

“Is Barberton afraid to play us?”

Possibly. Maybe even probably. They saw the scores. They knew what was coming if they did show up at North Gateway Tire Stadium last Friday, even with a 100% healthy squad. Again, though, give them the benefit of the doubt. An unhealthy team full of underclassmen playing a state power was not going to be good for anyone.

This is why Highland is moving to the Suburban League’s National Conference. Games like these should, for the most part, go away.

The Magics, though, had they played, were not going to get maimed. Highland coach Mike Gibbons and his staff are as classy as they come. So are the Hornet players. It’s not like they spend their Friday nights cheap-shotting opponents and trying to send them to local hospitals. They don’t.

They take care of business. Their first string typically sits out the entire second half, sometimes more. Their underclassmen play a lot — a perk of being in a top-shelf program.

And in the wake of the game’s cancellation, people stepped up. Highland put on a show that would be fun to have every year and reminded everyone that the Hornets come from a top-shelf school and community.

That’s something nobody can question.