Leading off today: Ponder this for a moment:
They needed to land a trauma helicopter on the football field at Clyde-Savannah on Friday night in the aftermath of a brawl ... and the incident leading up to that development wasn't remotely as bad as what took place an hour to the west shortly after another Section 5 game in Rochester.
First up:
As has been common for a number of years, the Rochester Police Department found itself overwhelmed (and forced to leave most of the rest of the city ignored) at the conclusion of a high school football game at East High School. Shortly after the Eagles dropped a 12-7 showdown of state-ranked teams to defending NYSPHSAA Class B champion Monroe, fights broke out alongside the campus, spilling onto Main Street.
(Worth mentioning: As has become customary, the cowardly Rochester media went out of its way not to report this.)
While police were dealing with the aftermath, there were two reported shootings -- the victims were males aged 34 and 40 -- within half a mile of where that chaos was centered. The latter was pronounced dead at the scene with a wound to the upper body.
Investigators told reporters it was unknown if the shootings were related to each other. Nor would any of the media reporting would go so far as to suggest a connection to people leaving the football game, but the circumstances are hard to ignore.
At approximately the same time, officials had to end host Clyde-Savannah's 16-14 win over Palmyra-Macedon in the closing second after one of the visiting players trucked the Golden Eagles quarterback after he was already down while kneeling out the game.
The incident triggered a melee, with some players from both teams leaving their sidelines.
A statement Saturday by administrators of the two schools said they are working with Section 5 officials and authorities to gather information. The statement went on to say no one required hospitalization "as a result of the fight," but two students were transported to hospitals, one by Mercy Flight, as a result of incidents "unrelated to the altercation that occurred during the game."
A couple of observations
(1) It took some massive linguistic gymnastics for the administrators at Clyde-Savannah and Palmyra-Macedon to split hairs on the injuries that sent two students to the hospital. The careful wording might lead someone to believe the students slipped near the drinking fountain outside of study hall at 9 p.m. and stubbed their toes.
The fact that there could even be incidents purportedly "unrelated to the altercation" yet serious enough to require trips to the hospital should be worrisome in itself.
(2) Whether the shootings in Rochester were connected to the football game is actually irrelevant in the bigger picture. Violence -- some of it aimed at police officers -- has become routine after night football games at East High. The visiting teams change from incident to incident and year to year, but the home team is always the same.
East has remaining home games at night with Vertus Charter on Oct. 2 and McQuaid on Oct. 9. The mayor and the string of Rochester City School District superintendents have allowed the dangerous scenarios to continue, so the question is whether administrators at schools scheduled to play at East will put a proverbial foot down and insist on earlier start times and better security.
Who's going to have the courage to say enough is enough?
More later
There's actual Week 3 football stuff to talk about, and I'll try to get to it in another blog later on Saturday.
WEEK 3 FOOTBALL SCOREBOARD
