The shootings at the Central- Whitmer football game were terrible. The good news is that no life was lost, and we hope for a very speedy recovery for those that were wounded.
Kudos to the police, school officials, school security, teachers, coaches and parents that helped to ameliorate a very dangerous situation. There are roughly 398 million guns owned by civilians in the United States with a total population of 329 million people. That in itself is an inherent problem.
We cannot solve that issue here but what we could do is take more measures at sporting events to help with the safety issue for kids, parents, coaches, teachers and fans. Everyone today has a cell phone. Maybe at sporting events a general cell phone number could be made available to fans attending the games. They could text the number if they see something that they think is suspicious or something that does not look right. Have one person at the game location monitoring those texts and reporting them to police and security people at the game location.
Our high school sports are so very important to our student athletes.
The intrinsic lessons kids learn through sports are life lessons that you carry with you forever.
We need to be very vigilant and protect our kids and their high school sports.
It can be taken away quickly. I played football at St. John’s High School in 1969 and because of trouble at games we started to play all our games Saturday morning at 10 a.m. or Sunday at 1 p.m.
Let’s really be alert, watch, be aware and help to keep the high school games safe for everyone and keep the Friday night lights on.
Tom Cole is community outreach coordinator for Taylor Automotive Family.
