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Not Just the Game
Navy fans leave rematch feeling new respect for Wake Forest
Journal photo by Linda Brinson
Deacon players join the Navy team and fans for the alma mater.
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Published: October 5, 2008
That was the real Wake Forest on display last weekend.
That's what I was happy to be able to tell fellow Naval Academy parents, many of whom were full of praise for the warm reception 400 or 500 midshipmen received when they came to Winston-Salem for the Wake Forest-Navy football game.
Wake Forest had soundly beaten Navy the year before in Annapolis, 44-24. Navy fans aren't likely to bear a grudge about getting beaten, especially by a team that had gone to the Orange Bowl the season before. But many had a lingering bad impression of Wake Forest after that weekend last October because of the actions of a handful of students off the field. Four students were charged with vandalizing Navy fans' cars in a hotel parking lot in a senseless spree that, according to witnesses, involved scratching, denting, spray-painting and writing racial and anti-gay slurs.
Navy fans -- especially parents of midshipmen -- were already angry about the way a few drunken Rutgers fans had insulted Navy players and fans at a game earlier that fall in New Jersey. A lot of today's students at the academy, who will serve in the Navy or the Marines upon graduation, have parents or grandparents who remember the way sentiment against the Vietnam War eventually spilled over into sentiment against the troops who fought in it. They understandably get pretty prickly about any sign of disrespect. Some people on the Navy parents' e-mail list-serve mentally filed Wake Forest in the same category with Rutgers, and that's not a nice place to be in their minds.
The charges in Annapolis were eventually dropped in exchange for payment of damages, according to some of the witnesses and victims, but Wake Forest University officials had said that they took the incident seriously and that any offenders would face the university's judicial system. Some people involved have been dissatisfied that the university did not let them know exactly what punishment, if any, was meted out. University officials say that federal privacy laws prohibit them from releasing information about the outcome of student judicial proceedings.
Harold Holmes, the associate vice president and dean of student services at Wake Forest, told me last week that "the university absolutely took action, and spent an extensive amount of time evaluating the background information to arrive at a set of consequences for each student that was involved in this unfortunate incident."
But, although those directly affected will not soon forget what happened, even they acknowledge that the actions of a few foolish college students should not reflect on an entire institution. They know there have been midshipmen over the years who acted badly.
And now those who came here to the Navy-Wake Forest game last weekend, and those who read about it on the parents' e-mail list last week, have a truer idea of Wake Forest.
Officially and unofficially, Wake Forest reached out to Navy folks, especially the visiting midshipmen, with respect and hospitality. Many of the midshipmen who came to town as part of the academy's official "movement order" found places to stay and/or parties to attend on campus. Some finished eating at the lunch tailgater the N.C. Navy parents club put on for them at Ernie Shore Field and headed to a Wake Forest tailgater where they had heard there was Southern fried chicken.
Except for the football players and cheerleaders, all the midshipmen heading for the game were in uniform, summer whites with Navy blue raincoats as needed, so they were pretty easy to spot. Everywhere we walked with our son and his roommate, Wake Forest students and fans went out of their way to speak to them. Even after the game.
At the game, the Wake Forest band played "Anchors Aweigh" before the action started, and all the cheering and comments I heard were appropriately for fans' respective teams, not denigrating the opponents. It probably helped that several times during the game, an announcement was made about how much Wake Forest values good sportsmanship and civility at games.
The announcers also recognized all the current and former service members and public-safety workers in the stands, especially the midshipmen. In several sections, Wake Forest and Navy fans were squeezed in together, sometimes engaging in friendly conversation.
Navy fans I talked to after the game were impressed perhaps most of all by the behavior of the Wake Forest team members after they had been startlingly upset 24-17 by a Navy team that wouldn't give up.
At the end of every game, win or lose, the Navy team walks over to the section where their midshipmen classmates are standing (they never sit), and as the Drum and Bugle Corps plays, they all sing the alma mater, "Navy Blue and Gold," together.
Most opposing teams head for the locker room. But the Wake Forest players, even though they must have felt thoroughly let down, stood respectfully beside the Navy team. And then the favor was returned, as both teams headed toward the Wake Forest students who were sitting at the other end of the east side of BB&T Stadium for the singing of "Dear Old Wake Forest."
All in all, it was an uplifting day for both schools. OK, I'm sure it was a little more uplifting for Navy.
But Wake Forest sure won some points off the field.
Linda Brinson is the Journal's editorial-page editor. She can be reached at lbrinson@wsjournal.com.
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