Coming into the game, the players on the Pioneer Varsity Football team knew something was going to happen, Luke Rogers said. Rogers is a sophomore at Community High that plays for Pioneer and was present during the outbreak on the field Sept. 14, 2018.
“They’ve been the team to stoop to really low levels in order to get the opposing team rattled and off their game,” Rogers said.
One interception was all it took to push the teams over the edge. As the cornerback, Geffen Peterson-Sand intercepted the ball turning the tides in Pioneer’s favor. Huron got fired up. Peterson-Sand had went down onto the ground, protecting the ball while waiting for the whistle to be blown when the wide receiver from Huron tried to take the ball aggressively from Peterson-Sand. They play was over and the boys stood up in order to keep playing the game.
As they got up, number ten pushed Geffen which created a brawl on the field. “A player came onto the field without his helmet on and was ready to swing,” Rogers said. “Coaches were trying to hold him back and we could tell that Huron wanted to hurt us.” The fight only lasted a couple minutes, but within that time two Huron players had to be ejected from the game.
After this mishap, many players thought the game was going to be over. Officials worried that Huron would keep trying to pick fights with Pioneer’s players and something worse could happen.
“We all ran over to our student section and we were all hyping them up,” Rogers said. “It was fun while it lasted but then we all noticed the game was still on,” Rogers said.
The Pioneers ended up finishing the game 48-6,making it the 17th year in a row that Pioneer had dominated over the Huron River Rats.
During the third and fourth quarters people began walking out of the game and were told they couldn’t come back in. A rumor had been spread around that someone had a gun, and the police were on there way. Soon enough everyone was going out to the parking lot when a fight broke out between two boys in front of everyone.
“Within no time a bunch of police cars were swarming around the place,” Rogers said. Fights were breaking out, people were running and worried parents were screaming for their kids to get into the car.
Many rumors are still going on after the game on this topic. Was there a gun? Did someone really shoot? Fortunately nobody was injured horribly, except for the ones that had been in the fights that night and once the police had got to Pioneer most of the fighting was over.
One event that took place between Huron and Pioneer students that Rogers has good insight on was about a nine year old. Presumably, a Pioneer student on the JV Football Team was disliked by multiple Huron players, and to teach him a lesson, they decided to hurt his little brother in order to hurt him.