Saturday night, a group of several Coyle and Cassidy hockey fans watched their team take on the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) in a hard-fought match that ended with the embarrassing arrest of one of them, a parent, that might easily have been avoided.
During the game the men, most of whom we can assume were also parents, stood around drinking and subjecting those near them to shouted obscenities. When one Islander spectator, a parent with two youngsters, asked the men to tone it down because of the presence of children, a member of the group redirected his obscenities at him.
Fortunately, once they were made aware of the situation, MVRHS athletic director Mark McCarthy and Oak Bluffs police officer Dan Cassidy, who was working a detail along with Officer J.J. Mendez, quickly stepped in and took control of the situation before it could escalate further. The men were asked to leave the building.
One man repeatedly tried to reenter the arena. Had he simply listened to the police, the night would have ended with him on his way home and not on the way to the Dukes County Jail.
He was arrested on a charge of trespassing and carrying a loaded weapon while under the influence of liquor. What possessed him to think it was necessary to carry a loaded 9mm Ruger pistol inside the Martha’s Vineyard Ice Arena, hardly the place where the average person ought be in fear for his or her personal safety?
The man was not an off-duty public safety officer, who might have a reasonable excuse for traveling armed to a high school hockey game on Martha’s Vineyard. He is just one of the legions of private gun owners with a license to carry (LTC) a concealed weapon who thinks he needs to be armed.
Oak Bluffs Sergeant Nicholas Curelli, who was the supervising officer that night and was called to assist, spotted the pistol on the man’s hip in the course of the arrest. His professionalism is appreciated.
Putting aside the details of the ongoing national debate over firearms regulations that has inflamed passions on all sides, no responsible gun owner, of which there are many, would condone this man’s actions.
These men ought to have known better. They were guests of our community. What possibly made them think that it was acceptable to attend a high school athletic event and behave in that manner?
Is it the hockey culture? At the professional level, hockey is a sport where assault and battery is an accepted part of the game, and fans cheer while two men pummel each other in the middle of the ice.
High school hockey games are exciting affairs where raucous spectator behavior appears to be the norm and not the exception. Fans, particularly parents, get emotional.
But the purpose of student athletics is to help students to develop physically and emotionally. Taunting and hurling obscenities has no place in the student environment, and ought not be tolerated on the part of the home or visiting team by school officials. The lessons of good sportsmanship need to begin at a young age.
When parents forget their responsibilities and indulge in childish, boorish behavior, they provide an example to their children they may later regret.