By Fred Gray
The Hedley Owls hosted the Motley County Matadors last Friday, October 26, 2012. The game was a disappointment from the very beginning. Motley County, exhibiting a remarkable disdain for good manners and good sportsmanship, immediately commenced to crank-up their sound system to ear splitting decibels, potentially causing deafness to the people across the football field, where their speakers were aimed. There is no doubt in my mind that they used it as a weapon of intimidation against the Owl players. Even more disturbing, their choice of music was in poor taste.
I strongly suspect that their head coach missed the UIL Statement of Competition that is read before each game. Perhaps he is suffering from hearing damage that resulted from his high decibel speaker system.
Complicating this weird football experience, the Hedley head coach was thrown out of the game, after two unsportsmanship penalties for overzealously defending his players.
Assistant Coach Garret Bains was then cast into the center of the tempest, which was once supposed to be a football game. Coach Bains was able to keep his players focused, which was a minor miracle in itself, and they fought valiantly and hard for the rest of the first half, which ended with Hedley’s only score. With 35 seconds left in the first half, and ultimately the game, Brandon Evans sprinted 10 yards up the middle for the touchdown.
Motley County did finally lower the volume of their speakers with 2:33 left in the game, which was appreciated by all.
Even though Motley County led by large margin, their coach, Mike Bigham, continued to call upon his players to continue attempting onside kickoffs, rather than kicking the ball deep and playing defense, which would have been the sporting thing to do.
Final score: Motley County 62, Hedley 6.
All I can say about this article is WOW! With all due respect to Mr. Gray, maybe you should take a good look at your article and think again on who out of the two schools need manners. Motley County has very good “Sportsmanship” and very well “manners”. I don’t remember any of our fans screaming out to the Hedley fans when they didn’t agree with a decision on the field. I can remember several Hedley fans screaming out across the field at Motley County though.
As for the sound system, I can’t think of one song that was not suitable for fans of all ages attending a football game that was played on our sideline. Perhaps you should think back on what Hedley was playing. I remember hearing some rap and hip hop being played on that side. Yes, Motley County is proud of the sound system that we have. It helps get our players pumped up and ready to play and gets our fans pumped and ready to cheer on our team. If our sound system was so “deafening” then why didn’t the Hedley administration request that it be turned down a notch or two at the beginning of the game?
As for Coach Bigham, Motley County has had a very successful and respectful football program since he bagan coaching MC in 2006. I have lived in Matador for 29 years and I cannot think of any other football coach in MC that has earned more respect from his players than what Bigham has. Every coach has their different philosophies on coaching that not everyone is going to agree with 100% of the time, but if you look back at his record, I would say he has a pretty successful and respectable career at coaching.
Motley County fans have a lot of school pride and school spirit and stand behind our team and our coach 100%, win or lose. We apologize if our “SPIRIT” made your Friday night football game a “weird experience”.
Oh….and on one more note, which coach was asked to leave the field for “UNSPORTSMANSHIP Penalties”? Not Bigham……just saying.
How very embarrassing for your football team that your newspaper would actually print this. Perhaps a better headline would be “High School Football Team Intimidated by Loud Music”. Maybe you would like some cheese with that “whine” – “They were bad sports, but WE got kicked out of the game for unsportsmanlike conduct”. This was a High School Varsity FOOTBALL game, not a peewee soccer match, so, no, we don’t have to take turns with the ball. Take a step back and reread this article.
WOW!!! This article is far beyond the truth! You need to get your facts together before you print something like THIS! What an embaressment to your paper customers community and the school! Talk about bad sportsmanship. You just showed it in the best way!! Quit whining!!! A loss is what it is so man up and deal with it!! Get your big boy britches on!!!
I am player for the owls, and i didnt care about the music, i was not intimidated by the music playing, nor did i think they were disrespectful and unsportsman like, they beat us fair and square, and i dont want to look like punk for what someone else writes about my team. We had a down year, and i admit that. Oh and the man who wrote this isnt even from hedley.