The bell rings. Students pour into the hall and hurry to their next class. A baseball player passes a football player. The football player stares at him, but the baseball player looks straight ahead.

The football player has had enough. He confronts the baseball player. The football player accuses the baseball player of staring at him menacingly. BOOM! Phones come out. Tension is in the air. A fight is about to commence. 

There has always been tension between the baseball team and the football team. Part of the tension was caused by the two teams sharing practice space. Baseball would have a game and football would still be on the field, so the baseball coach would get mad and yell at the football team to get off the field. Football wouldn’t have a good practice due to the fact that every other minute a baseball would be hit onto their field and sometimes they worried that they would get hit. Also, baseball would make fun of football for having terrible seasons for many years. 

Everything got worse when baseball  made fun of football because they went 1-11 in their season. Football also got mad when a baseball player posted an Instagram story calling the football team a “sorry ass team.” That’s when the baseball player started mad-dogging the football player. 

The football player had enough and decided he wanted to do something about it. He decided to tell his teammates about the mad-dogging and they wanted to confront the baseball player. Some football players who were friends with some of the baseball players told them to warn the baseball player about the potential conflict. 

The baseball player stopped mad-dogging the football player once he got notified about the trouble. 

That’s what led to the standoff in the hallway, where it looked like backpacks would come off and phones would come out.

But no fight happened.

Why?

The baseball player didn’t want to jeopardize getting kicked out of the team during the season.  The football player respected that decision. 

Both players came to an equal decision: they would let the drama between them die down. 

“I’m happy that calmer heads prevailed,” Restorative Justice Coordinator Leo Casañas said.

The players made the right decision. Fighting would get them kicked off their teams. Fighting each other would not get them anywhere. There are no pros in fighting, all cons. Because of their devotion to their teams, they settled on an agreement.

That took a lot of sportsmanship.