Powder Puff or MMA? No One Knows the difference!
Albert Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author of 'Things Fall Apart', once said, "When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day." Achebe clearly was not at the annual but final Powder Puff Game for Lewisville High School last night. The score board read 28-7, of course the Seniors in the lead. The game was going as it does every year, Junior and Senior girls battling it out in a friendly, not-so friendly game of flag football. But this year it was different. The game was scheduled for April 20, 2015, also widely known as 420 or "Weed Day", an annual excuse to abuse illegal drugs. A school sponsored event and 420 do not make for a family-friendly event to be enjoyed by all. As I cheered for the junior girls I was surrounded by students who were clearly under the influence, the distinguishable order of "Mary Jane" filled the stands. In addition to the blazed spectators, a girl from the Senior team was seriously injured due to excessive force from another player. The game came to a stand still when Senior, Haley Drake, had to be escorted off the field, she spent the night in the ER, lucky for her the Medical Center of Lewisville is less than a mile from the school. Drake spent the following morning in surgery while doctors tried to repair the damage to her broken ankle. Later in the day she posted a tweet saying, "I know this is going be a super unpopular opinion, but I'm kind of happy that they are taking away the Annual Powder Puff Game. I know that what happened to me was an accident and the fight at the end was just on incident, but in all honesty this is all absolutely ridiculous! It's just a flag football game! And it's comforting knowing that people aren't going to get hurt because of it anymore." No truer words have ever before been tweeted. A long standing tradition becomes a problem when young adults can't respect themselves and their school enough to act maturely. Almost everyone is to blame, from the players to the people in the stands. Even after the game resumed, a fight broke out after a Senior tackled and kicked a Junior in the face. The two started to tussle as everyone on the field joined in to exchange blows. It only takes but a second for a tradition to be ended once and for all. It's a shame that a deadly mixture of a bad decisions and judgment, excessive force leading to a serious injury, an all out brawl in the middle of the field and a made up "holiday" encouraging subsistence abuse, ends a tradition intended to be a way to engage in a friendly game of flag football.
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