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T-R column: Trying to think more and react less

Ross Thede, T-R Sports Editor

PLEASANT HILL — I took the weekend to process it all. It requires some time to digest a bite that size, and my eyes saw more than I could swallow.

The thoughts that danced around in my head on the drive back to Marshalltown on Saturday were impulsive, and my ability to stay levelheaded has expanded with the passing of every one of my 21 years as a sports editor.

I’d never before seen what had just transpired, and by no means am I immune to knee-jerk reactions.

The Marshalltown High School boys soccer team had finally secured its first state tournament berth in 18 years, but it was the circumstances surrounding their Class 3A Substate 4 championship game victory that took center stage.

I’ll preface the rest of this by telling you this is likely my first column since 2004, my first year with the Times-Republican, when the Bobcat volleyball team took to the state tournament and bowed out in the first round with a thrilling five-set loss to Cedar Falls. The final point in the Tigers’ favor came on a tipped attack that landed out of bounds and was ruled — mistakenly, in my view — as being touched by the Marshalltown blocker.

Those girls were heartbroken. I can still see then-senior Claire Hanken bawling as the Bobcats left the court. Head coach Terri Westendorf took it in stride, as all coaches should, but was the first person to tell me how much she appreciated my resultant column demanding better officiating at the state level.

I can’t recall a single word I typed, but the sentiment revolved around the Bobcats deserving better, and the hard-working student-athletes of any school, for that matter, deserving better.

And in a few years, I’ll be demanding that my children have it better. But I won’t do it the way some Bobcat soccer fans chose to do it on Saturday.

Please hear me out. Don’t react to that statement without reading the rest. Emotions are pure, uncontrollable and involuntary. It’s the heart without the head. Unfiltered is too raw for some people, and too strong for some situations.

Make no mistake — I used to be the same way. The loudest person on the softball diamond was that kid in center field: high socks, no sleeves and shouting obscenities for God and everyone to hear.

He grew up, he fell in love with a profession that demands impartiality, and he relishes the opportunity to represent those values for his children every time they watch or participate in a sporting event.

Sometimes it’s a lonely place, floating even-handed in a sea of obscenities, injustices or maybe even prejudices. Saturday was one of those times for me.

I find great joy in running alongside a celebratory student-athlete, trying to capture their emotion with my camera and eventually my keyboard, too. Yet there’s nothing harder than photographing those on the other side of the outcome as well. These are kids from your hometown, your coverage area, who gave their all only to see it fall short.

When the referee’s whistle interrupted the Marshalltown boys soccer team’s celebration on Saturday at Southeast Polk, so began the most bizarre series of events I’ve ever been exposed to in this gig.

In Sunday’s Times-Republican I told of the sequence of the events and the eventual victory the Bobcats managed to achieve, a 3-2 defeat of Southeast Polk on the strength of a 6-5 shootout advantage. I tried to do it without emotion, without reaction, without bias and without a slant, because to be quite honest I hadn’t decided exactly where I stood on the whole situation.

If you were at the soccer match, you saw what you saw and I’m not about to try changing your mind, but I urge you to be open-minded. Marshalltown junior goalkeeper Jesus Munoz was pretty certain he had stayed on his line, but the video taken by WHO TV Channel 13’s photojournalist showed otherwise. His stutter-step toward Southeast Polk’s Brandon Banyas was slight, but evident, and both officials made the call.

I was 50 yards away, peering with one eye open through a telephoto lens. In the moment, I thought Munoz made a legitimate save and sealed the Bobcats’ brilliant shootout victory as I sprinted (OK, tried to sprint) alongside Pah Dah Bu and Jack Play as they raced toward their goalkeeper to join in the celebration of Marshalltown’s apparent triumph.

The people paid to regulate the match made the call, a bold and brazen one considering the gravity of the situation, but in retrospect the right call. We’re lucky Channel 13 had video to show us the error of our ways, and I’m thankful to have enough perspective to want to see the video to know — not think I know — exactly what happened.

Munoz told me after the match that the referee had explained the rules of the shootout and he understood clearly that any goalie to leave the line early would be carded and removed. That’s what happened.

The source of a lot of what transpired on Saturday, in my humble opinion, was a lack of communication. The referees couldn’t communicate with the public address announcer to relay the reasoning for Munoz’s removal, and by the time MHS head coach Scott Johannes and assistant Bobby Shomo had the answer, some of Marshalltown’s fans had threatened physical violence on the head referee, four-letter words not withstanding.

That doesn’t fly in any high school sporting event.

I don’t begrudge any Bobcat fans for jeering, scoffing or shouting at the referee. Without an explanation, I would have been upset too. Getting to state is a HUGE deal. I never made it in any sport and would give so many things for a couple second chances at that at-bat with the bases loaded against East Marshall’s Matt Knoll during a district baseball game in Beaman; or that shot out of the sand trap — and into another sand trap — at Pheasant Ridge Golf Course during districts.

I digress. My playing days are long gone, and your children’s soccer playing days appeared to be in jeopardy on Saturday. Some fans and parents chose to swear at the ref, some cited discrimination and some cooler heads prevailed. Having the entire fan base removed from the bleachers? Out of line. But so were some of the shouts from the stands.

Regardless of that unprecedented move that was prompted by the referee — not the on-site officials from the host school and soccer opponent Southeast Polk, the taste of victory the second time had to be even sweeter for the Bobcats. They had defied their opponent, they had defied an overwhelming dose of adversity, and they had defied 18 years of denial since the last MHS team made it to state.

“What I thought was they didn’t want us to win because they kicked our fans out and everything, that’s what I really thought,” said Marshalltown senior Brandon Ordaz. “That’s how I felt.”

I hope Brandon is wrong.

“Marshalltown almost got Marshalltown’d again. That was a horrible, horrible call.”

I won’t tell you who shared that thought with me, and I probably shouldn’t have shared it with you, but it perfectly depicts the way people feel: that there’s a bias against Marshalltown and its teams because … well, I’ll let you fill in the blank the way you see fit. I prefer not to finish that sentence in an attempt to erase the idea altogether, stop the spread of hate, fear, anger, discrimination, even though I’m well aware it’s out there.

The Bobcats winning that shootout three rounds after its fans had been removed from the grandstands is an incredible show of character, of strength and unity, and of TEAM. You should be proud of the way they responded and maybe a little ashamed of the way some of you responded.

“Obviously I was very confused and I didn’t understand, it was a bit upsetting, but you can’t do anything about it so we just focused our minds on the next PKs and that’s exactly what we did,” said junior midfielder Rene Hernandez, “and I’m happy we did because we won.”

“I think that was very unfair of them [removing the fans],” Rene continued. “They traveled all the way over here so they could watch us and to be removed like that, I think it’s unjust. We’re very glad that they were still there, they helped a lot, the fans motivate us a lot.”

It’s a great credit to members of Marshalltown’s various levels of administration, who were in the crowd as fans. MHS athletic director Rollie Ackerman, superintendent Theron Schutte, associate principal Justin Boliver and others helped to calm an understandably unruly Bobcat crowd and help maintain order in a situation that, had the final outcome changed, might have gotten out of hand.

I certainly didn’t want to have to write about that, and I’m thankful the Bobcats made sure you didn’t have to read it, either.

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