ELK GROVE — Troubled by the increasing bad behavior of adult fans in the stands at sporting events, the Sac-Joaquin Section is implementing a yellow-card-red-card system this school year for unruly spectators.
“We instituted this in the spring,” SJS assistant commissioner Will DeBoard said during Wednesday’s Media Day at the section office. “You’re going to hear a lot about this.”
During the 2022-23 school year, there were 724 total ejections at section-sanctioned sporting events, with just 35 of those overturned on appeal. Of the 689 upheld ejections, nearly a quarter of those (about 175) involved adults. That’s coaches, assistant coaches, and parents.
“We felt that was too high,” added DeBoard.
So, just like in a soccer, unruly fans could be issued a yellow card by school officials, to serve as a warning for their bad behavior. A second incident during the event would result in a red card, and ejection from the premises — with a suspension to follow.
“An adult who gets ejected from a game is going to most likely be suspended for more than one game,” said DeBoard. “If it’s an adult coach, we have a metric that determines how many games the coach would sit, but it’s one to three games. If it’s an adult spectator, they’re out for three games, period. If an adult spectator is ejected from a second game, they’re done for the year.”
The suspensions for adult spectators are, however, sport specific. In other words, an adult spectator suspended from watching volleyball games could still attend soccer games during that volleyball suspension.
Pitman athletic director Dustin Curtiss mentioned the new system to parents during a sports-information meeting held recently. He said he saw several parents nodding their heads in agreement with the new process.
“A lot of parents were like, ‘Good, we need to have some discipline in the stands,’” said Curtiss. “This is a non-confrontational way to say, ‘Hey, please don’t forget that we have sportsmanship guidelines.’ And then you hand them a card.
“It’s is a great tool for us to have in our tool box. And the section will back us. Hopefully, we never have to issue any red cards.”
The section issued each of its 200-plus member schools a stack of 50 yellow cards and 25 red cards.
