DeSOTO — Interest in this year’s Duncanville and DeSoto football game was so high, dozens of fans who couldn’t get into the sold-out stadium snaked around the fencing just to get a glimpse.
DeSoto’s Eagle Stadium drew a crowd of more than 10,000 that Friday night, making for an electric backdrop to the game between two rivals and defending state champions who recently tied their all-time series.
Many of the players from Duncanville and DeSoto, cities separated by fewer than 10 miles, grew up playing youth football together. The close ties create competition among fans who take seriously a game that has bragging rights and often the district title on the line.
Fans arriving at this year’s game passed through metal detectors as local and DeSoto ISD police officers monitored all corners of the stadium. Before kickoff, the public address announcer reminded fans to show good sportsmanship and leave promptly after the game, and a pastor prayed that everyone would leave the game safe — and alive.
Everyone did. And Duncanville won, 42-20, assuring its spot atop the state’s Class 6A rankings.
But the serious pregame messages and security measures signaled the efforts North Texas school districts have taken to respond to increased online threats toward schools and incidents of violence at or connected to sporting events nationwide.
Three weeks before the DeSoto-Duncanville game, DeSoto ISD announced comprehensive updates to its athletic events protocol for fans, including strict rules for students attending games.
Gun violence has occurred before, during or after a high school game every week of the high school football season since 2022 to Sept. 1 of this year, according to David Riedman, who founded the K-12 Shooting Database, which provides information on more than 2,850 incidents nationwide dating back to 1966. Since Sept. 1, shootings have occurred at youth or high school sporting events all but one week this fall, Riedman found. In Texas, eight shootings connected to high school sporting events have occurred since 2021 and three have occurred this year, according to the database which accounts for shootings on school property.
Riedman and Karissa Niehoff, CEO of the National Federation of State High School Associations, told The Dallas Morning News they noticed an uptick in violence surrounding high school sports in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I live in Indianapolis, where every morning on the news, we’ve got another story about senseless use of guns,” Niehoff said. " And that’s not profiling anything — it’s all of us. It’s everybody.”
In the Dallas area, incidents such as the fatal Sept. 6 shooting of Kimball JV football player David Washington across the street from Kincaide Stadium, where Duncanville and South Oak Cliff had played that Friday, have heightened community concerns over safety.
“You want to go places where you feel comfortable and safe and secure,” Harold Wheeler, a fan on the DeSoto side of the stadium, said before the Duncanville game. “These young kids are 15, 16, 17 years old shooting each other, killing each other.”
Gun violence and policy changes
DeSoto ISD announced new security policies last month that include requiring students to have their IDs visible during games. Kindergarten through eighth-grade students have to be accompanied by an adult, and visiting students who don’t attend the high school of the opposing team have to be accompanied by a parent or guardian and sit on the visitors’ side of the stadium.
“The district is always proactively working to improve safety protocols for all district experiences, so these revisions are constantly in development to allow us to review and revise as needed as we learn and observe patron activity,” said James Thomas, DeSoto ISD chief of maintenance, operations and security. “The question regarding what the district can do to make things safer and secure is always looming for us.”
Last month, Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Cedar Hill, Dallas, Ennis, Fort Worth, Irving, Royse City and other North Texas school districts increased police presence and canceled or postponed some classes and events after receiving online threats. One student was arrested for threatening to “shoot up” Wylie East High School.
“Your kids go to school and you’re not expecting [them] not to make it back home because of a shooting,” said Erica Holiday, the mother of Duncanville three-star cornerback Javion Holiday. “That’s the last thing that you would ever want to hear.”
Why is this happening?
Riedman, who started the K-12 Shooting Database after Florida’s Parkland shooting in 2018, said the return from COVID-19 closures seems to have corresponded with increased violence at sporting events.
The pandemic exacerbated anxieties, Riedman said, and cultural and legal changes have encouraged adults to carry weapons in public places.
“That carries over to kids emulating the behavior of adults,” Riedman said. “When kids are arrested with guns, there are statements that they’re carrying the guns for protection. They’re carrying the guns because they fear being victimized.”
Niehoff said the pandemic led to people having higher levels of anxiety, as well as a loss in basic civility.
“We thought maybe there will be this ironic silver lining to COVID and that people will come back and be more appreciative and more gracious. Behave better,” she said. “And actually, we’ve found the opposite.”
Not just a high school sports issue
Youth football coach Michael Hickmon was shot and killed in August 2022 after a game in Lancaster, where a fight broke out over a disagreement about the score.
Hickmon’s family filed a lawsuit against Big XII Sports League and Family Services in December 2022, accusing the organization of failing to vet coaches and provide a safe environment with adequate security.
Niehoff said the lack of parameters makes youth sports like the “wild west.”
“There’s this quick trigger to disagree, to yell, to demonstrate upset and worst of all to emotionally, verbally and physically assault,” Niehoff said.
DeSoto High coach Claude Mathis said he’s seen this behavior at youth football games.
“Parents have to stop when it comes to all the cussing and going off on coaches and wanting to fight other people,” Mathis said. “I’m just hoping that as adults we can try to prevent a lot of this nonsense that is happening at our Pop Warner games because I do see it.”
Keeping communities safe
Like DeSoto, Duncanville ISD added a requirement last month that all students have a current ID badge to attend athletic events and be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
The school district purchased AI weapons technology that can detect firearms on a person to place in its high school and middle schools, Duncanville ISD police chief Mitchell Lambert said.
District police are also working with city police to establish a better relationship, he added, with one goal being to create a heavy presence at sporting events.
“If you come to a Duncanville ISD game, you see the heavy police presence, you see the red and blue lights everywhere, the countermeasures we’re taking with the gun protection, it looks like we’re preparing for something tragic,” Lambert said. “But what we want to do is create an environment that is proactive.”
Dallas ISD students must also adhere to identification and guardianship requirements at games, district police chief Albert Martinez said, and there are also new bag requirements.
“Unfortunately, our biggest issue at the beginning of the season was a significantly large volume of unaccompanied students at the game,” he said. “One difference to cite is that we changed the size of the bag that can be brought in because we had also found in the previous years that large bags were being used to take in vapes and other items.”
The chief said the new measures have created some logistical issues regarding entrance, but the process is getting more efficient.
“Overall in safety, we have been pleased with the calming effect of the new gameday measures,” Martinez said
That effect was also clear in DeSoto, where safety measures didn’t deter from the electric crowd, pageantry and everything that makes Texas high school football great. If any fans were uneasy, it was not palpable.
Duncanville mom Holiday said some fans find heightened security measures at high school sporting events inconvenient, but that she fully supports the new protocols.
“The moment you don’t take this seriously,” she said, “that’s when something is going to happen.”
Find more high school sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
