With '2 strikes' coming to NM, how has it worked in other states?

No one seems quite able to explain why, but there is consensus on the movement having reached a tipping point following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I would tell you, for at least 10 years we have been throwing different tactics at trying to improve our sportsmanship,” said David Jackson, who governs high school sports in Oklahoma.

“After COVID, we had more acts of poor behavior than we had before. … We expected the opposite,” said Jackson, the executive director of the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA).

This uptick proved to be the final impetus for Oklahoma. Prior to the 2022-23 school year, it implemented a special bylaw designed to mete out harsher penalties to its 482 member schools in the event it was warranted.

This aforementioned movement has come to be known in Oklahoma as the “2 Strikes” initiative. It’s known that way in other states as well — including, now, New Mexico.

Its ambition is rather simple in theory, even if its application might prove to be somewhat more complicated — to compel high school athletes, coaches and (especially) fan bases to behave themselves and keep their tongues in check during competitions.

“I think we’ve all had a lot of issues with crowd control, and want to make sure the NMAA, and us as schools, are taking this seriously, and that they have to settle down,” said Albuquerque High athletic director Chad Jones.

New Mexico’s “2 Strikes” bylaw will go into effect this coming school year. The first official regular season contests in football, soccer, volleyball and cross country begin in the coming weeks.

“What we needed to do,” said Sally Marquez, the executive director of the New Mexico Activities Association, “is to curb this behavior now before it truly gets out of hand.”

Out of necessity

As with Oklahoma, New Mexico, Marquez said, has witnessed a steady and sometimes dramatic erosion of manners at high school sporting events. Yes, this applies to athletes and coaches. But fan bases are more the issue than anything else, Marquez said.

A measure such as this one was on the NMAA radar, since perhaps before the pandemic even started. But things have been spiraling since it ended, Marquez said. “And on the national scene,” she pointed out, “other state associations were seeing the same thing.”

The NMAA’s 165 member schools had the final say, though only a meager 68 schools participated in the vote (56-12 in favor was the tally). Approximately 41% of the membership chose to weigh in.

The first two sections of the new bylaw (7.7.4) read as follows:

• Any time an egregious act of unsportsmanlike conduct by a team participant, including a coach, occurs two or more times during the same season, at the same school, in the same activity, the team will be suspended from participation in that activity for the remainder of the season;

• Any time an egregious act of unsportsmanlike conduct by a non-team participant occurs two or more times during the same season, at the same school, in the same activity, the non-team member, along with all school spectators will be suspended from attendance in that activity for the remainder of the season.

Ultimately, it is Marquez who will rule as to whether something qualifies or not as a strike. But, she added, her office will collaborate with an individual school before any punishment is determined and handed down. “We will look at the scenarios and make decisions collectively,” she said.

Punishment to an individual team or fan base, even if apparent to the public, will not be announced by the NMAA, Marquez said.

In Oklahoma — a neighbor the NMAA has been watching closely in recent years — the approach bundles every egregious act together, putting teams, athletes and fans under the same umbrella. Fans in Oklahoma therefore can directly impact a sport’s eligibility with multiple acts of outlandish behavior.

Jackson mentioned one particular male fan who last fall during the Oklahoma softball season chased an official off the field. New Mexico has also seen plenty of harassment of this type.

“We let (that school) know, ‘This is strike one for your school,’ ” Jackson said, adding that the parent later volunteered to not attend any more games out of concern his daughter’s team might have to forfeit the rest of their season.

The NMAA has separated fan behavior from what happens on a playing surface. Marquez is not in favor of having teams suffer the potential loss of games, or a season, due to something beyond the athletes’ control like spectators who cross the line.

A fan being banned for 365 days by the NMAA — which the NMAA already has the power to do — would not necessarily constitute a strike, Marquez said. She said coach and/or player ejections would not count as a strike, either.

It’s groups acting in unison that are going to be most under the microscope. Student bodies — this occurs in Albuquerque with some frequency — often direct profane chants toward an opposing team or a game official. That’s going to be a zero tolerance item now.

Plenty of adults at various schools also have been known to lack verbal filters, and Marquez believes it is now incumbent on other fans to attempt to police their own inasmuch as that is possible. The NMAA has already released a video speaking to the fans on this topic.

“There’s a huge burden,” she said. “In that video, it talks about how it is time for other people who see bad behavior to step up” rather than wait for an onsite athletic director, or administrator, to wade into the stands themselves to tamp down the rude noise of the rowdies.

“It’s going to take all of us,” Marquez said. “Having a fan screaming, yelling, we’ll continue to remove them from the gym like they should be. Multiple fans, when they are threatening, running after an official off the court, that’s another story.”

Get a Webster’s

How an “egregious” act will specifically be defined is a sticking point for some who claim it’s too vague. The NMAA bylaw lays it out with this language:

“Unsportsmanlike conduct is defined in the NMAA Handbook as non-compliance with sport specific rules and NMAA policies, including behaviors incompatible with ‘Compete with Class’ and the interscholastic educational objective. Examples of egregious unsportsmanlike conduct by participants, coaches, or spectators include but are not limited to, fans entering the playing surface to engage in acts of violence or abuse, constant verbal attacks on officials, attacking other fans, coaches physically or verbally attacking officials, players fighting other players during post game handshakes, or student sections verbally chanting inappropriate or demeaning comments towards individuals, teams, or officials.”

The officials portion of this is certainly a prominent menu item.

“I just think (the bylaw) eliminates, now that there’s a severe penalty, it eliminates some of these problems with fans (going after officials),” said West Mesa High athletic director Shonn Schroer, who voted in favor of the bylaw. “It has gotten out of hand.”

NMAA Commissioner of Officials Zac Stevenson said he hopes the “2 Strikes” bylaw might help retain officials and perhaps even encourage some to return who had previously left because of how they were verbally berated.

“I think the biggest piece is it empowers our school administrations to have another tool in their toolbox to help educate people and their crowds,” Stevenson said. “Which, in turn, will trickle down to an improved environment for coaches and officials.”

In Oklahoma, Jackson said his state had 12 first strikes issued against schools in the 2022-23 school year, the majority of them in soccer and basketball (and none in football). None earned a second strike.

“What we saw was more of a change in the demeanor of people,” Jackson said. “When we unrolled this to our membership, it got a lot of people’s attention. School administrators and fans at games, they were talking about this. This was such a big change for us.”

Louisiana also has installed “2 Strikes” language. And other state associations are circling similar legislation.

Marquez said there were probably only eight or so incidents during the most recent school year that would have qualified as a strike. A Cibola-Los Lunas playoff football game last November that officials called late in the fourth quarter due to an abundance of aggressive behavior and major penalties would have counted as a strike against both teams. (Going back as far as 2018, football fans from Española Valley were banned from attending a home game against St. Pius; that punishment was handed out following a fight the Sundevils had in a previous game that season with Bernalillo in which some Española Valley fans got involved.)

Also from last school year, Carlsbad and Roswell’s boys basketball teams had a benches-emptying fracas late last season in a game at Roswell High. Multiple players from both teams earned suspensions. Fans from both schools spilled onto the court, and both fan bases received a one-game ban by the NMAA. All totaled, this would have qualified as a ‘four-fer,’ with strikes against both teams and both fan bases, under the NMAA’s new bylaw language.

Dissenters

Not everyone is on board with the “2 Strikes” bylaw, at least how it is worded.

“I am 100 percent in support of accountability for positive behaviors,” said La Cueva High principal Dana Lee. “For coaches, for families, for players. But I do have a concern, and I’ve voiced this with the NMAA … I don’t know how this is going to be monitored. I don’t know who is in charge of reporting offensive behaviors counting as a strike. Will there be a hotline? Are officials supposed to be in charge of reporting negative behavior? It could get messy if there’s not a system in place.”

Marquez said reporting alleged incidents of poor behavior to the NMAA “is not a formal process,” with her office receiving reports from officials, coaches and administrators.

Highland voted against the proposal.

“Our explanation was, we felt like it was only partly complete,” said Hornets athletic director John Barnhill. “It was not well defined. … We are supportive of the intent, but we just wanted a little more clarification.”

Barnhill said there may be too great a burden on young officials to make decisions “that maybe they don’t have the experience to make” and feels there also ought to be an appeals process. “We felt it was rushed through,” he said.

Logan’s longtime AD, Billy Burns, also voted against. Logan is one of the state’s smaller schools. Burns, like Barnhill, felt this may put more pressure than needed on game officials who, he said, already have enough on their plates.

“It’s probably a bigger school issue than a smaller school issue,” Burns said, adding, “One of the things we were a little concerned with was, is how is it going to be decided? How will it be decided whether you get a strike or don’t get a strike?”

Burns said he believed the “2 Strikes” bylaw could be “revised a little bit, and put in some more parameters.”

Regardless, for or against, the bylaw is here, and now everyone waits to see how it will play out.

“It’s high school sports,” Stevenson said. “Bad behavior needs to be a no-fly area.”

Said Marquez: “We can do better.”