The Ansonia Chargers varsity football team could tie a state record tonight for consecutive wins.
This is good news.
(Update — the Chargers fell short)
But there’s one thing that has bothered me about the coverage of the Ansonia High School football team.
There’s a narrative in the local media that Ansonia is an angry and depressed Bruce Springsteen song. And I’m not talking Reagan-era upbeat “Glory Days” Springsteen. I’m talking bleak and blurry “Nebraska”-era Springsteen.
The column continues after a depressing song from Bruce:
The narrative, so the story goes, is that Charger football is the one thing Ansonia residents look to with pride.
Don’t believe me?
LOOK! Ansonia is a town where women “scream at you from their cars,” according to the executive editor of a website that spells sports “sportz.”
(Note: the writer from the website explains his characterization in the comments section)
LOOK! Ansonia is a scrappy, blue collar town! In this story the writer just plops the narrative on the top of the story, then never revisits it or explains why it’s there.
LOOK! It’s a town where football players go to die.
Without football we’d all be wandering the streets like the ghouls from the Walking Dead, consuming and killing each other.
I don’t see it.
I see people who work for a living. I see pockets of poverty. I see houses much nicer than mine. I see a city that shouldn’t fall into a convenient narrative.
I see folks who support the football team out of a sense of community. Who doesn’t like a team that wins?
I don’t think our socioeconomic status comes into play.
The narrative makes it seems that everyone in Ansonia is unemployed and skinning rabbits to eat the meat like in “Roger and Me,” Michael Moore’s touchstone documentary about Flint, Mich. after car manufactures started hemorrhaging jobs.
Again, I don’t see it.
The fact is, in 2014, there are plenty of people like me who didn’t live in the Valley in 1982, 1992 or even 2002.
I don’t remember the glory days, but I’m sure they were glorious, because glory days usually are.
But I still hear the narrative, which, at this point, is a stereotype: a bunch of poor kids look to football because it’s the only way to increase their lot in life.
To heck with that. I’d be willing to bet anyone reading this in Ansonia right now makes as much if not more money than local journalists.
It’s been rehashed so many times there’s pushback from residents indirectly aimed at the football team.
We can’t post something Ansonia football-related on our Facebook page without someone making a snide remark about academics or asserting that football gets too much attention, as if the football team are newspaper editors or content mangers at “Sportz Edge.”
I’m not an expert on high school football. I know little to nothing about Ansonia High School football.
But I’m willing to bet the kids win for the same reasons wealthy kids from lower Fairfield County win — practice, a good program, skill, good coaches, a good work ethic, talent, chemistry, and dedication.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see what the loss of jobs of Main Street a generation ago has to do with tonight’s game against Newtown. The players are teens, after all. They’re good all on their own.
Which, by the way, is why I was so happy to read this column by veteran News-Times/CT Post (and whatever other collection of papers Deadwood‘s George Hearst controls in Fairfield County) columnist Brian Koonz.
Koonz attempts to look beyond the stereotype, thankfully.
Agree? Disagree? Want to yell at me? Post your comments here.
