The Redmond vs. Garfield basketball game: Old news, right?

Well, just in case this is news to you, I will fill you in. It began as a typical high school basketball game, but as the end of the game approached, the tension began to rise.

One of the referee’s calls got the two teams to fight with each other, or rather just push each other. As the players exchanged words, a Redmond senior came out of the stands and got into the argument with his fist, and from there it only got worse.

Fans from either side, although surprisingly more from Garfield’s stands, got involved in the fight. The jaw of a Redmond player was broken by a Garfield player and a few other people got hurt.

The Seattle newspapers have turned this into a story of a privileged, majority-white school beating up an inner-city school because of race, and they have misled the readers to assume that the actions of one fan reflected the actions of the entire school. That simply isn’t true.

There is an entirely different culprit to this story, and it’s the system.

These days high schools are encouraged more and more to form rivalries with other schools, not friendships. What should have been a game to see which team plays basketball better that night became a fight between schools, with each side having the mentality that they are better than the other side.

High school students need to be reminded of what a game is, and as long as the school districts and the individual schools encourage rivalries and elitist competition, sports between schools will continue to end violently.

Teen Talk is a monthly column written by local teenagers. Micah Zeitz, 17, is a junior at Redmond High School. He is the President of Robotics Club and the Youth Chair of the Redmond Youth Partnership Advisory Committee (RYPAC).