Friday night lights, a most American tradition, has become synonymous with school shootings

Further notes from the sporting apocalypse. In the third quarter of an Oklahoma high school gridiron game between the Choctaw Yellowjackets and Del City Eagles two Friday nights ago, shots rang out. Players from both sides immediately recognised the telltale cacophony and scampered for their lives. In video of the match, as the field emptied before him, the quick-thinking PA announcer could be heard urging “everybody get down”. Sixteen-year-old Cordea Carter was killed, a teenage girl wounded, and a 42-year-old man was shot by an off-duty cop who perceived him to be a threat. The shoot-out at Choctaw was one of three gun-related incidents at school matches across the state that evening.

At half-time in the Sugar Cane Classic, a traditional rivalry fixture between Port Allen High and Brusly High near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, last Friday night, the shooting started near the concession stand. Many in attendance initially thought they were listening to fireworks going off as part of some interval entertainment. Then they heard the screams of terror and quickly realised the rat-tat-tat was something far more sinister. Although a medical helicopter eventually landed on the long-vacated pitch to evacuate the injured to a local hospital, Ja’Kobe Queen, a 16-year-old student, later died from gunshot wounds.

A mere sample there of the 11 shootings at high school football matches in a season that is not yet a month old. Friday night lights is a most American tradition that begat one of the great sports books by Buzz Bissinger, a mediocre movie, and a beloved television series. Across this country, from small towns to sprawling suburbs, these floodlit games are communal gatherings and family heirlooms, like GAA club fare in Ireland. Religiously, people turn up to cheer for the varsity team every autumn because that’s what they’ve always done. Equal parts endearing ritual and cherished custom, it has now become synonymous with the settling of beefs and the depressingly familiar thwack of chambers being emptied.

In Baltimore, Maryland, the season-opener between Paul Laurence Dunbar High and Loyola Blakefield was abandoned just before half-time after somebody unleashed a round of automatic gunfire outside the stadium and wounded a 12-year-old. Footage, because games at this level are such a big deal they are always filmed, captures some players throwing themselves to the turf while others high step towards cover.

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A 15-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl were shot following the gridiron encounter between the Mount Carmel Caravan and Morgan Park Mustangs in Woodlawn, Illinois. That incident took place near a car park where fans like to tailgate before and after high school games, these being huge social as well as sporting events on the calendar.

From dollar stores to discos, everywhere else in this country has become a shooting gallery so the youth sports field must too

Police in Jacksonville shot and wounded a juvenile who fired into a group of fans leaving First Coast versus Ribault, a game that had been abandoned in the third quarter due to too much fighting. Extra cops were present at the venue that night because the host school had amplified security after hearing rumours about potential trouble brewing. Although metal detectors ensured no weapons got into the stadium, the 15-year-old shooter blasted at people through a fence. That was the third shooting at a youth football event in the Florida city in five days.

In a society that thinks it completely normal to have “Run! Hide! Fight!” security drills to prepare kindergarteners for attacks by mass shooters, a place so dysfunctional that children’s backpacks come with a Kevlar-lined option to stop bullets, none of this should be too surprising. After all, k12ssdb.com, a website dedicated to collating statistics for a database on shootings in schools, counted 37 such incidents at student sports events last year. Having tallied nine in the same time frame just a decade ago, they chronicled 12 consecutive weekends in 2022 when school matches were marred by gun violence.

From dollar stores to discos, everywhere else in this country has become a shooting gallery so the youth sports field must too. With the prospect of meaningful gun control laws the stuff of political fantasy, principals, who already spend too much of their budgets securing school buildings, are scrambling to make what should be fun extracurricular events safer. It says something about the warped values of a nation that signs will now abut high school pitches warning: “Firearms, weapons, and explosives are strictly prohibited.” Which is bound to ward off anyone intending to pack heat on the way to the game.

One Florida district recently splurged $7 million purchasing 80-plus metal detectors for 23 high schools. With so many educational institutions scrambling for cash, however, that’s not a viable option for all of them, especially in poorer areas, and, as seen at the Jacksonville game, it doesn’t always prevent violence either. Manpower heavy airport style security is also cost-prohibitive although there’s a hint of that in some now implementing a clear-bags only policy for supporters, and restricting access to matches to teens with valid student IDs.

In the meantime, the madness continues to play out. Oklahoma police investigating the killing of Cordea Carter caught a break when an eyewitness gave them the nickname of the alleged shooter, a male wearing a grey hoodie. Enough of a lead for them to track down Dayvion Hamilton, a 15-year-old student now facing a charge of second-degree murder. They caught him because, in this country boasting more guns than people, everybody knew him on the street as the kid they called “Bullet”. A sentence containing multitudes.