Self-control on the sidelines

The day after unhappily watching the EMU-Eastern men's soccer game on Sept. 24, I spotted an EMHS bulletin board bearing these familiar words from Galatians 5:22:

"And the fruits of the spirit are these: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

It seemed that these fruits were largely absent on Sept. 24 at EMU. Spectators frequently yelled at the referee and sometimes razzed the Eastern players. My husband, who joined me at half-time, is a certified referee and a soccer dad (two daughters, one son, and two surrogate sons all play club or school soccer). He shook his head at the ridicule heaped on the referee, noting (for instance) that a referee is required to blow his whistle when a player is on the ground, tangling his legs around a ball--the referee was not stealing the ball from EMU. My husband also noted that referees are not allowed to make calls based on what spectators perceive, only on what they or their linesmen see.

I felt embarrassed that EMU students were displaying little patience, kindness and self-control to a referee who lives locally (and who could easily be accused by Eastern of having a bias toward his friends and neighbors) and who--I am told--has ably refereed in three of the last four ODAC championships. In cases when a referee is truly incompetent--and not just fallibly human, like the rest of us--there are procedures for addressing the problem through the referees' licensing body. No referee is going to be improved by being upbraided from the sidelines.

When one of our players fell to the ground in the final minutes of the game, there was little forbearance on our sidelines, or on the playing field for that matter. Instead there was the presumption of malice and purposeful injury by the Eastern player involved. A brawl almost erupted.

I know none of the players at Eastern, but the school has an excellent reputation for "walking its talk" as a Christian institution. It also plays excellent soccer, which accounts for its current no-loss record. It seems highly unlikely that the Eastern soccer team would harbor a soccer sadist, who purposely tries to "take out" EMU players. Obviously an Eastern player crossed the boundary from legitimate contact to hurtful contact, but could it have been an accidental transgression committed in the heat of the game? Was the game so close that an Eastern player needed to send an EMU player to the emergency room in the final minutes in order for Eastern to win? Surely the path of Jesus would have been for EMU to display "patience" and "self-control" toward the Eastern team.

I hope EMU will become known throughout ODAC as the school where players, parents, students and fans take seriously EMU's mission to "walk boldly in the way of nonviolence and peace." It won't always be easy to do this, but nobody promised that it would be. In short, I hope EMU earns a reputation for astonishingly good manners toward referees and forbearance toward opposing sports teams. Let's have the courage to be different from the mainstream sports world.