With the local high school sports season about to begin, officials are announcing strict new spectator rules.
The first game of the season will be played Thursday at Central High School in Bridgeport, where the new initiative No Names, No Numbers will be played.
The Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference says it will do so during the fall season to avoid negative comments from opposing team fans.
Officials told News 12 that the initiative will prevent fans from targeting players by name or jersey number.
They say social media exacerbates the problem of negative comments from audiences. This is because spectators learned more about players on the field and court and made more specific and negative comments about them.
The FCIAC Commissioner says incidents of this kind have become more frequent since the pandemic began.
“They hadn’t been in a game in two years and a lot of them didn’t really know or didn’t know how to behave in a game. may consider how they should behave…but the attitudes weren’t good and the comments weren’t positive,” FCIAC Commissioner Dave Schulz said.
The conference plans to step up the initiative with the help of crowd control officers and student leaders.
It will be held at 16 schools in the league.