Aledo High School scored a 91-0 football victory over Western High School this past week.

The response from one of the Western parents was for the books: The parent filed a bullying complaint against Aledo … for running up the score.

http://www.wfaa.com/sports/high-school/Aledos-91-0-win-earns-formal-bullying-complaint-from-Western-Hills-parent-228766911.html

I don’t quite know how to respond to this one. I can start, I suppose, by stopping my laughter.

Aledo Head Coach Tim Buchannan said he kept his starting players on the field for 21 snaps. That’s it. Then he put in his reserves, who then continued to romp over Western.

What does a coach do? Does he tell his players to deliberately miss tackles or blocks?

This incident reminds me a bit of a sporting event I once reported on back in Oregon when I first started out as a journalist in the late 1970s. I was a sportswriter for a small paper in Oregon City. West Linn High School, across the Willamette River, was one of the schools I covered. West Linn had a very good baseball team. They were coached by a fine guy, Terry Pollreisz, who knew when his team was matched against an inferior opponent.

One afternoon, he found his team on the field against an utterly hapless opponent. They kept scoring runs virtually at will. Pollreisz then employed a strategy that backfired. When his players hit routine singles, he told them to run for second, hoping the other team would throw them out. It didn’t happen. The outfielders would toss balls into the stands. Pollreisz’s base-runners then would advance to third. Then they’d score on the next hit.

This went on until the game ended. I cannot recall the score. Suffice to say it was a mega-blowout.

The opposing coach then became angry with Pollreisz, accusing him of “running up the score.” Pollreisz’s said his intent was to give the other team ample opportunity to end these rallies.

The other team did not file a bullying complaint against West Linn’s team, which incidentally went on to win the Oregon state 5A championship that year.

I feel badly for Western High School’s team. Those kids’ esteem has been battered by a 91-0 defeat. However, they weren’t bullied.