The truth about RidgeChester

How sports keep you grounded chapter 1 (American football)

Room 401 and 402 in RidgeChester High School were a riot. Nearly 30 boys in each room were forced after school on this Thursday afternoon to serve detention. It wasn't? unusual for the detention rooms to be full. In fact, RidgeChester had a regular changing of all sorts of different students spending their weekdays and weekends in detention.

However, on this particular day, the detention rooms were full of the same kind of kids, and those kids all happened to be football players.

It all started innocently enough. One of the better players was asked to spend time in detention for having an excessive amount of tardies. The boy did as he was supposed to, he got his mother, teacher, and coach to sign the slip, notifying them of the situation and that he'd miss practice and have to come home late.

Of course, boys will be boys, and not too long after, a good friend of his discovered detention was prohibiting him from going to practice.

"Awww man." His friend commented when he found out. "Practice is never fun when you're not there. If you're not going, neither am I."

This particular child, who tended to have a much bigger attraction to mischief than his friend, knew that he couldn't skip practice without a good excuse or Coach would skin him. So, being the brilliant teenager he is, he decided to give himself detention as well, that way he'd be able to join his friend.

Unfortunately, a chain reaction ensued. The boy's friend purposely got caught with a cell phone in his 3rd period, earning detention. Later three of his friends, angry that two of their teammates weren't going to make it to practice, raided the teachers desk to steal back the phone and got caught red-handed, earning them each a day suspension and week detention. The next day, some more teammates thought it unfair that their friends would be suspended, so they started a food fight in the cafeteria as protest, which somehow, lead to a real fight between them and the lacrosse team.

In the end, more than half the team was in rooms 401 and 402 after school rather than being at practice the day before a game.

The team made it known they were unhappy. Instead of sitting quietly and doing as they were told, they spent the entire time bragging about what landed them in detention and cursing about the people who sent them there.

It wasn't long before Miss. Jenny, the detention teacher, decided she had enough and stomped out of the room. She exited room 402 and retrieved Mrs. Sharpe, her co-worker from room 401. The same problem ensued here. Despite Mrs. Sharpe's yelling and demands, the boys simply ignored her and chatted and texted. Some loudly complained about having to serve detention and others were telling inappropriate stories in the back.

"I've had enough." Miss. Jenny said.

"I know how to handle this." Mrs. Sharpe answered, and she disappeared down the hall, instructing Miss Jenny to put all the football players in one room and the other detention kids in the other.

Miss. Jenny did as she was told and prayed that Sharpe wasn't leaving her. As expected, the football boys made a loud ruckus while retrieving their things and entering room 402.

They slapped hands and hooted when they realized they were all being put together, and their laughs and stories were louder as they talked amongst each other.

At least it's somewhat civilized, Miss Jenny thought bitterly, as the boys took it upon themselves to make a game of standing in the front of the classroom and re-enacting the huge fight from yesterday.

Little did they know, Coach was standing right outside the door, listening in on chatter. It didn't take long for him to reach the limit of his anger. He couldn't believe his kids were acting this way. He'd taught them better, or at least, he'd warned them enough times to behave with other teachers or else he'd make em regret it.