Yesterday's Marquette Mining Journal's front page featured headline
story was about an incident which occurred after the final WCHA
playoff game in St. Paul between Minnesota and Northern Michigan
(must be a combinatin of a slow news day, even for here, and the
grip hockey has on this town).
The gist of the article is that some "fan" from Marquette was viciously
(my word, but you can get the flavor from the article) taunting the
Golphers as they left the rink following their championship game with
NMU, which they lost. This guy admits to standing on the backs of two
of the chairs and leaning over the glass to shout "Golden Chokers" at
the Minnesota players. The players were understandably in no mood for
this and apparently some of them waved their sticks at the guy as if
they might be thinking about hitting him with them. A Minnesota
assistant coach admits he went into the stand, thinking he would
intervene before a stick-hitting could actually take place but "lost
my cool" when he got close to the Marquette person, and took him by
the shoulder and told him to cut it out. The coach admits to using
profanity, which he says the "fan" was using liberally before and during
the coach's intervention. The fan slipped off the chairs in the
process and allegedly ended up with a damaged shoulder. According to
the newspaper story, Minnesota officials are investigating, both to
see if additional security measures should be instituted to separate
fans from players after games, and about the coach's behavior. The "fan"
has reported various versions of this incident to the league and lots
of other organizations.
I report this, NOT to ding Minnesota--just the opposite. This is the
sort of thing which I really dislike about some "fans" behavior, and
for whatever reason it seems more common in hockey arenas than
elsewhere (at least in this country). I have absolutely no sympathy
with the Marquette person (note how I refuse to call him an NMU
fan because I'm one of those and don't want to be associated with this
type). What gets into a 50-year-old man which makes him think it's
appropriate to hurl insults, profanity, and generally attempt to
taunt and humiliate a bunch of twenty-year-olds who have just played
their hearts out and suffered a very difficult loss? I told my
daughter, whose boy friend is the reporter who wrote the article that
I think the guy got what he deserved. She agreed, and indicated that
everything the reporter was able to dig out about the incident seems
to show that the "injured party" not only brought things on himself
but started out lying, or at least greatly exaggerating (is there a
difference?) about what was done to him, and what he did in the first
place.
When my wife and I were caught up in the tremendous feelings brought
on by the 1991 NC$$ championship win by the Wildcats over Boston
University in St. Paul, the last thing in the world which would have
occurred to us was to insult the B.U. players. In fact, we gave them
a hearty round of applause for a great effort, then went around to
the NMU side of the arena to join in the cheering for our team.
Why does hockey have to bring out the worst in some people??!!
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* Steve Christopher, NMU *
* "Go 'Cats!''Goin' for it again in *
* '93--With a little less "O" *
* and a lot more "D"! *
* [log in to unmask] *
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