Columbus City Schools in Ohio announced Wednesday that Beechcroft High has canceled its final football game of the regular season against Northland, citing “ongoing concern directly involving the safety of Beechcroft High School football student-athletes.” That’s a sentence I never thought I’d read. A school actually preemptively canceling a football game because of potential gun violence.

The decision ends Beechcroft’s season and automatically gives Northland a win under Ohio High School Athletic Association rules. The district did not specify what incidents led to the decision, only saying the principal and leadership team had multiple concerns. It is hard not to connect that statement to what happened last weekend when a shooting right outside Beechcroft High left two juveniles and an adult injured.

Police say the victims were waiting for an Uber when masked suspects approached and asked if they were part of the football team before opening fire. As of now, police have not named any suspects.

It is chilling enough that kids cannot stand on school property without being shot at, but now we have entered new territory, canceling games before someone else gets hurt. This is Ohio, a place where high school football borders on religion, where teams play through rain, snow, and freezing cold. Yet a school decided it was safer to give up the game entirely. That says everything about where we are.

And it made me think that maybe this is what it will take for people to finally care. Maybe schools and parents will start pushing harder for real safety measures when gun violence begins jeopardizing college futures. When a player loses a scholarship because their school had to forfeit too many games for “safety reasons,” it suddenly hits the one nerve America always responds to: opportunity.

Imagine the recruiting board at a major university. Johnny from Beechcroft has good stats, but his team had to cancel the last game because it was not safe to play. Then there is Billy from Northland, who got that extra win, got seen by one more scout, and got one more highlight reel uploaded. Which one do you think gets the scholarship?

Maybe that is when schools and policymakers finally start moving, not when shootings traumatize kids or when parents beg for metal detectors or counselors, but when football scholarships and college admissions start slipping away. When the violence begins to threaten the sacred institutions of American youth, athletic prestige, and college potential. Maybe that is when someone will finally say, “enough.”

It should not take a canceled football game to get us there, but apparently, it does.

(Source)

• Beechcroft High School football game canceled over safety concerns