SAT scuttles early start for football
2 big games will start at 5 p.m. Saturday instead of 10 a.m., officials say.
The district’s first two Saturday morning football games are being pushed back to later in the afternoon after administrators realized that hundreds of athletes and band members — not to mention student fans — were previously engaged: They will be sitting for the SAT college entrance exams.
The move was a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking from Palm Beach County School District leaders who only Sunday night announced a bevy of safety measures in the wake of a shooting that sent two men to the hospital and terrorized a stadium full of football fans Friday night.
The shooting happened beyond the bleachers at Palm Beach Central High in Wellington during the fourth quarter of a game between Central’s Broncos and the William T. Dwyer Panthers. The Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office had not released any news of arrests on Monday.
Authorities have been firm that the two men shot were targeted and their beef was unrelated to the school or the game. Still, when gunfire was heard, panic ensued as fans rushed for cover and police flooded the scene. For
all intents and purposes, it felt like a school shooting, though police later called it something else.
Regardless, the events prompted a security review and a meeting of school district leadership Sunday afternoon that resulted in sweeping changes to the football schedule and protocols at other large school-based events.
The biggest change: Two significant games scheduled for this week were moved from Friday night to Saturday morning at 10: Park Vista vs. Dwyer and Palm Beach Central vs. Atlantic. Superintendent Donald Fennoy said these games were moved because they are “big” rivalries that also happen to be the first official games of the season. (The Central vs. Atlantic game has district and playoff implications, according to Central Principal Darren Edgecomb.)
By Monday morning, those plans were under fire from a handful of parents and even one of Dwyer’s coaches, who took to Twitter to air his concerns.
“How are we expecting of student athletes to play a game on Saturday morning when they’ll be taking their SAT’s? Not to mention over half of my team works on weekends,” Palm Beach Central Coach Santino “Tino” Ierulli posted Sunday evening.
Meanwhile, on Facebook parents raised the SAT conflict, the work hours, but also worries about playing in South Florida’s morning heat. One mom urged others to call or email the superintendent in protest.
Not quite a dozen parent emails had landed in Fennoy’s inbox by midday Monday, according to district Chief of Staff Amity Schuyler.
The worry over the SAT conflict proved to be wellfounded, as more than 200 students were signed up to take the exam at Dwyer High alone. By lunch time Monday, district leaders had pushed back the Saturday kickoffs to 5 p.m.
The later Saturday start also alleviates concerns about the heat, said Edgecomb, who said he shared those reservations.
“When college football teams play on Saturday afternoons, they have the best of the best from cooling fans to a sidelines of medical assistants,” Edgecomb said. High school teams don’t have those luxuries.
To date, these two games are the only ones moved to Saturday, but Fennoy said that other significant games may also see Saturday starts. His one example, The Muck Bowl, the hallowed game that annually pits players from two of the most storied high school teams in the county: Pahokee vs. Glades Central.
The district is still working on the rest of the season’s schedule with the goal of starting all Thursday and Friday night games by 6 or 6:30. Moving these highly choreographed events is not simple, involving not only athletes, but also game officials, staff and even parent volunteers who man concession stands and the like, Edgecomb said.
“With daylight hours, they’ll have a better handle on the crowd, the disposition of the crowd,” Edgecomb said. And sending students home “before it is completely dark” is worth exploring, he said.
Palm Beach County has moved games in the past after a shooting near a school or to threats of violence. The Muck Bowl has been played on Saturdays a couple of times and a Boca High game was moved from 7 p.m. Friday night to 4.
What goes on inside the stadium is still being hammered out by a team of principals. Their recommendations are due to Fennoy by Labor Day, said Schuyler.
As it stands, different schools have different rules. Edgecomb said that Central already bans students from bringing bags or backpacks into the game, but he said, “We were not checking parent bags.”
For certain, the district allows only clear bags — or diaper bags if they are searched, Fennoy said Sunday. Other meeting takeaways: Third-quarter ticket sales are out, and if you leave the stadium, you’ll be buying another ticket to get back in. If you don’t, you’ll be expected to leave the school campus. No loitering before, during and after the game.
Despite being praised for the measures he had in place Friday night, Edgecomb says, “I have a new perspective.”
When he heard what he knew to be gunshots, he was on a golf cart headed back to the Broncos’ side of the field after spending some time chatting it up with professional rival and friend Dwyer Principal Corey Brooks. “It startled me and was terrifying . ... I thought it was right behind me and it was.
“I could see our police running toward where they thought the danger was. This was the fourth quarter. I had ridden around and knew where everyone was.
“Football players had gone past me to the boys’ locker room,” Edgecomb said. “I saw a lot of the football parents and staff I knew and rushed them into the girls’ locker room. I was going in and out, trying to corral people until the cavalry came — and they came pretty quickly.”
Days later, Edgecomb is still beaming in pride. “I feel like we’re in an exclusive club with a great school culture that took care of each other. The adults were prepared.”
Monday morning at Central, attendance was higher than Edgecomb had expected. The campus was flush with additional security, counselors, psychologists and more. He made a point to visit classrooms, to be seen like he often is, iPad in hand.
But his perspective has changed.
“It takes my mind to a whole other stratosphere and takes that process to preparing for games like it never did before. We plan officers, we assign locations. We were thinking all those thing are in place. But we hadn’t sat in a conference room and said, ‘What are we going to do if someone starts shooting?’”
“I wouldn’t want anyone to go through that, ever. We handled it as well as we could,” Edgecomb said. “I’m thankful none of the stakeholders lost their lives. It was horrible, icky even, but I feel quite blessed.”