- March 2nd, 2008, 12:43 am
#161152
Bigred got most of it right. Here's exactly what happened:
Eric Hall, #33, was waiting to check in. One of our members yelled, "Hey, your mom called, she's real proud of you." He turned around and yelled at her, "You said what?" To us, it looked like we had got in the kid's head and found something to get him off his game, just like the Buckwheat thing against CSU and the Little Lamb thing against PC.
Once word spread through our section, a group started chanting "Momma, momma" at the player. He was pulled from the game and was noticeably angry on the bench. He said something to a coach, the coach told Greenberg, Greenberg told the ref, and the ref told game management. By this time, we had found out that Hall's mother had died. I was trying to take control of it and apologize simply because we had no way of knowing that. I told the event staff (the same guy we got into it with earlier this year), I told Kevin Keys, and tried to tell one of their assistant coaches (Ali Ton) that was yelling at us that we were sorry and had no way of knowing.
After the game, we tried to apologize to Hall and he had to be restrained from running in the stands after us. Coach Ton was standing there looking at us and we tried to apologize to him but he wouldn't listen to it and went off on us. After the game, we were waiting around in our section just like any other game, and Coach Ton told us we needed to leave because if he came out and saw us he'd likely go after us. Granted, we weren't trying to start anything, we were just standing around talking.
I found out later that Hall's mother died when he was seven. He has "Momma's Boy" tattooed on his shoulder. I felt bad about it then and still feel bad about it now. I told Jerry Jr and Becki about it and they both said that we had no way of knowing before hand. If I could do something to make it right, I would, but there's nothing I can do. It's my group that I started and that I'm the leader of, therefore it comes back on my shoulders. If there are any Radford fans reading this, please know that we're all extremely sorry for what happened and that we didn't mean to cross that line. If I had a way of apologizing to Hall, I would do it. We can't take it back. What happened happened and what was said was said. However, I feel terrible about it and don't want an isolated incident from tonight to reflect on us as a group.
Edit: Apparently bigred edited his post, but there's the story anyways.
--Fumble (1961-2009), RIP
- By LU Armchair coach
- By ECC29
- By Purple Haize