Heckling Do's and Dont's

[ineedmorecowbell]

actually, the judge and holding cell were in the vet. people are seemingly a bit more behaved in the linc setup, for whatever reason. we did not throw bottles at santa claus. we booed him.

on a heckling note, i love it. witty heckling is great, even if you're the target. my freshman year, against chapman, our goalie, jeremy johnson, was called frodo baggins by the crowd because of his hairy legs and how short he was. matt mehrer (now at towson) was also told to get his little brother out of the cage. it was great my junior year when we were playing cal poly. we had some former players on the sidelines that knew about all the annoying bench cheers wcll teams have, and everytime we scored on them, our crowd would start chanting POOOO-LYYYYY.

a fun thing to do is to use their first names or middle names, especially if they're embarassing. a name like skyler is fantastic.

[Sonny]

No F bombs needed, especially when little kids are around.

No cursing is EVER needed. regardless of who is or is not attending. If you don't have enough creativity to do some intelligent heckling, they don't do it.

[Zeuslax]

Laxfan25 wrote:

You play the game hard, but without cheap shots. In my playing days, after a hard-fought game you still lined up and gave your opponent a firm handshake and sincere congratulations on a good game, rather than the weak touch of the gloves and mumbling that you see now. Is this too square for today's world? I sometimes regret that kid's starting to play today aren't inculcated with the finer traditions of the sport, and in my mind that is a loss for them, and for the game.

Amen to that!

[BigheadTodd]

Sometimes no matter how cerebral you try to keep it, people still get upset. I was heckling a ref from the stands at a BYU televised game, I won't say who, but if you play in Utah, he has reffed you, and he's irish. I kept it clean for the most part, but in the later stages I dropped the bomb. I got his attention(his biggest mistake) and told him that I was told the camera adds 10 pounds. Then I asked him "just how many cameras do they have on you?" Things have never been the same since. Last game, he actually started heckling me in the middle of a game. He called it a preemptive strike.

[PigPen]

Heckling is OK. Dropping F Bombs for 60 minutes is not.

Be creative. Use your mind.

the mist effective heckling I ever saw was USMA back in the late 1980's. Some cadets in PT gear came to watch their buds on their team play Rutgers. They asked me-hey kid let me see your program. They subsquently picked out a first line middie-started calling him out by his first name and basically just dogged every action he did. When you get a crowd of 100 cadets calling your name and making it personal it has to rattle you. Mind you these guys never cursed or crossed the line but basically chanted his name and added stuff like "nice ground ball" (when he missed one), nice shot, that's as fast as you can run? Nice sneakers. Jersey Boy, etc. . Hey Mike nice hit (after he got lit up). Anyway this guy was captain of the team and he finally lost his cool and said something to the crowd to which the cadets shrugged off and got louder and more creative. Rutgers, basically have seen their leader demoralized, just collapsed. And that is what home field is all about. It can be clean, but you want your fans to rattle the opponent. Some people just don't know the line or the place.

Now professional soccer...that's a different story.

[bste_lax]

My favorite heckling moment was at LMU two years ago. Florida State was playing Sonoma State and if you don't know LMU's field, it is on top of a two-story parking garage. Nothing too close to the edges but the sidelines with the bench are the closest to the edge.

Some Sonoma fans were ragging on one of FSU's attackmen and it slowly got to him leading him to either getting subbed out for a second or he ran out of bounds by the box on a clear, got frustrated and threw his stick which took a weird bounce and went over the side of the parking garage.

It was all the ammo the Sonoma fans needed for the rest of the game. He was out of it the rest of the game.

As Corbin and others have said before, the super obvious heckles are usually the best.

[Adam G]

I kept it clean for the most part, but in the later stages I dropped the bomb. I got his attention(his biggest mistake) and told him that I was told the camera adds 10 pounds. Then I asked him "just how many cameras do they have on you?" Things have never been the same since. Last game, he actually started heckling me in the middle of a game. He called it a preemptive strike.

Brilliant!

[LaxRef]

ESPN the Magazine had a little thing on heckling in the most recent issue. The funniest one was the fans who started chanting "Sweater. . . vest!" during a timeout . . . at the trainer! As someone in the piece said, "Who heckles a trainer?"

[GeorgiaLacrosse]

its hard to imagine having a great rivalry without rowdy fans that like to heckle. Its apart of every great rivalry in almost every major sport. Personally I think heckling is great. It doesn't matter if my team is doing the heckling or if another team is heckling me... i still like it. It lets fans feel like they are part of the game and that they can affect the outcome(this adds to the intensity of the game).
if you're playing in game and you let hecklers get inside your head than too bad... you're taking them way to seriously.


its fun to hear the witty comments from hecklers... like in the duke vs unc game when a duke fan had a sign that read "Carolina Blue is only past tense for Carolina Blows"

[yeagy]

Why do people get bent out of shape over heckling?*coughGrayBearcough* when you KNOW it is a part of sports. Maybe not in your "world" but it is in EVERYBODY elses world. I would like to know where your "world" is, I have NEVER seen it. I can go to a co-ed softball game or a swim meet and hear people getting heckled. And for everybody else, don't forget the old phrase "You are the poster child for mandatory abortion" - That always seems to get into their heads...

[Zamboni_Driver]

Someone may have already mentioned something of a similiar tone but, as an ex-NCAA goalie I was heckled all the time.

I never knew about it till after the game when my mother or the managers would ask me if I heard what the fans were saying. I never heard a word during the game.

I actually have to laugh at fans who call out to players during the game because with all the team communication and the distance between the sidelines and fans (even in the MCLA), there is no way for them to hear the taunts.

I always figured that heckling was part of the fan experience and that it didn't disrupt from the playing experience. With that being said, no fan on the sideline should disrupt the experience of another fan. Thus, heckling rules should really be discussed on context of how if effects the viewing experience of the fans. The discussion should really be how do we create a sideline experience that is enjoyable for both the fraternity brother, parent, and youth player since these will commonly share similar space at MCLA events.

[Dawson]

Heckling is a great tool for home field advantage but it absolutely is a part of the fan experience as well. That's a really great point.

I usually don't heckle very often, except when I see Steinhaus and his flamboyant orange shoes in the NLL. One of the things I look forward to though when going to a sporting event is just seeing what hecklers can come up with. I used to have season tickets to the Wild and one particular year we were in a section where everyone seemed to be a heckler, games were a lot fun and usually had a good laugh as well. We had a funny group of slightly inebriated fans behind us all year, always kept things interesting.

When heckling, you really just have to consider your environment. At a professional sporting event, you might be able to get away with a little more but at MCLA games, it might be a better idea to keep things "neat, clean and modest". You can certainly rattle a player without yelling a single obsenity. Those usually are the worst to be honest, can't do much about it. Just know your surroundings.

I remember once at a Swarm game though, I think some guy's last name was Nipple, or something really close. Boy, did he have a rough game.

[TexOle]

I did have one occasion where it was appropriate to use the f-word. There was a goalie in a hockey game, and his last name happened to be Fuchs. The ch had the k sound.

[Beta]

It's welcome in some places, and in some places it's not. According to what Im reading here.

Hockey heckling however, is a sight to behold. I literally remember being 4-5 and taking part of certain "chants"....then getting smacked when I repeated it in the car ride home.

[AO]

Careful: someday one of those moms will probably give put a knee to your tic-tacs -if the dad doesn't stuff your mouth with his fist first.

Pointing out the absolute obvious things can also be really funny.

This is one of my favorite tactics. You give me a roster of the other team and something obvious and funny to yell and its on. No F bombs needed, especially when little kids are around.

But, as I said before I'm not going to tone it down because somebody's Mom and Dad don't want me to single their kid out. If anything that would just give me my main target.