Switching gears slightly today, I wanted to address something that came up last week during my twitter travels. It concerns what is appropriate when discussing high school athletics, or perhaps I could state it better by saying it concerns what isn't inappropriate when discussing high school athletics. I believe vulgarity has no place in its discussion and I never think it's okay to personally attack or slam a kid for their athletic performance. But I also think there's a big difference between high school and tee ball. In high school, they keep score, have league champs, playoffs, individual awards, etc.. And unlike tee ball where everything's a tie and we all win, high school sports can result in some lopsided results.
Last week as I was scrolling through some tweets, I came across one that caught my attention. It read
"@AmherstTigers1 dismantling? Shame on Amherst High School in letting this word be used. Educators in this school should be teaching humility."
It had been sent by a certain newspaper photographer.
I clicked on @AmherstTigers1 to see what had actually been tweeted and found the following:
"B Basketball continued their winning ways in dismantling Springville 68-42 last night. Solid all around team performance. #Gotigers #Momentum"
When I attempted to retweet it, I was unable to, because it had just been deleted. A replacement tweet immediately went up, using the word defeat instead of dismantle. In response, I sent my own tweet out that read:
"There's nothing wrong w/ using words such as dismantle, rout, pound, smother, etc., to describe a win. #feelnoshame"
I immediately received a response from a different reporter/sportswriter/photographer saying:
"@centercourt42 you're wrong, in my opinion. This isn't professional sports. These are teenagers. Win w/ respect to your opponent."
I didn't bother to respond, because I'm not a big fan of using twitter for lengthy conversations, and I feared a response would lead to one. I did discover a tweet sent out by the same reporter/sportswriter/photographer that had gone out just before the response came my way. That read:
"Dismantling? That's a word that I'll never use is HS athletics. It's up there with 'killed' & 'destroyed'"
What about crush or rout? Is it up there with those words too? We'll get into that later.
First off, let's address the word dismantling. I find it curious that this word is receiving harsh criticism, but no where in the above tweets will you find exactly why anyone felt the word shouldn't be used, just that it shouldn't.
Why not? It isn't vulgar. You don't like the way it sounds? Have you stopped to consider what the word even means? First, here are some synonyms for the word defeat: overwhelm, conquer, crush, trounce, cream, thrash, etc.. Below is the definition of dismantle:
dismantle – take to pieces
synonyms: take apart, pull apart, break up, break down
If I wrote in a story, "In the second half, Taplin began to take apart the defense, breaking down what the opponent was trying do", would that offend an audience? I don't think so. But using the actual word is off limits?
Dismantle is a word I had just used to describe Olean's win over Greece Athena days earlier in my Poll Ballots – Week 3. It's also the same word the president of the NYS Sports Writer's Association, John Moriello, used in print to describe what East did to Aquinas in the second half of its win there. I polled several people about it from a newspaper editor, to coaches, fans, and even my favorite HS sports reporter. I was unable to find anyone who thought there was ANYTHING wrong with using the word dismantle.
Interestingly enough, when Canisius defeated St. Joe's on Saturday, the game story in the Buffalo News described it as a rout. The headline for the story was even more descriptive, "Canisius crushes St. Joe's".
Would anyone like to try convincing me that dismantle is worse than crush? Better yet, I wonder if either of the above mentioned twitter police contacted the Buffalo News editor or the sports reporter who wrote the story, to hit them with a "Shame on you". My guess is absolutely not and here's the reason. The offense taken by the two "twitter police" had less to do with the word dismantle, and a lot more to do with what is revealed at the end of another tweet I found below from one of them:
" "Kids who work hard day in & day out deserve more than that. Speaking as a reporter and an alum."
There you have it…"speaking as an alum". Turns out, both of the twitter police who work for newspapers and are trying to convince (or shame) people into fearing use of the word dismantle are, you guessed it, alumni of Springville!
Time for me to bring it all home with a lesson on word choice. The worst, most inappropriate thing that was said through all of this was actually tweeted by the first twitter cop & then retweeted by the second…Shame on Amherst High School. Are you kidding me? Shame? Check out the definition of that one:
shame – a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the conciousness of wrong or foolish behavior
So because a kid running a twitter account is excited about his team's success and accurately describes the win by using a harmless word, he gets taken to task by a pair of overly sensitive Springville alumni who knowingly resort to scolding and shaming? Shame on you! Actually, just realize you came on way too strong, from a biased standpoint (which journalists should make every effort to avoid), and learn from it. Shame should be reserved for heinous, intentional acts, not harmless twitter banter.
And to the student behind the @AmherstTigers1 twitter account – keep on keeping on and best of luck to the sports teams at Amherst as they continue to attempt dismantling the competition.
-centercourt
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