Athletes accept smack-talking as a part of playing sports

When football linebacker senior Henry Wei was trash-talked in his senior year for the first time, he was shocked.

“It was a game against Burlingame [last season.] I came out, saw a guy and hit him. I kept on blocking [as defense] and then after the play, he said, ‘All right, b-word,’” Wei said. “I just stared at him, walked to the bench and was like ‘Did anyone just hear that? He just called me the b-word.’”

But soon enough, Wei came to accept and follow this social norm as part of being an athlete rather than taking those comments personally.

Wei believes that smack-talking is done to “purposely try to aggravate your opponent and make your opponent think.” He further explains that thinking in an instinctive sport like football will slow the player down.

“For a lot of famous athletes, they smack-talk 70 percent for them and 30 percent maybe to affect the other person, get in their head and make them play bad,” Wei said. “You want to aggravate them. And sometimes, you smack-talk to just smack-talk.”

In some given circumstances, smack-talking is said as a way to celebrate and taunt the other team. According to Wei, an example of this would be after “you made a big play. You smack talk to the other person like ‘don’t even try that.’”

Soccer player junior Brandon Le admitted that he has smack-talked and more to the other team, but only when provoked.

“I usually foul them if they irritate me a lot. I usually talk back to them just to [anger them] even more and get in their heads,” Le said. “It usually angers me and so I retaliate stronger, more verbally and physically. When they have the ball, I would go for the player first and then ball.”

Likewise, Wei responds back to those who smack-talk him, and adds that his friends “will tell you that I come up with some of the worst responses on the planet,” describing his retort as quirky and eccentric.

“I’ve definitely been called the b-word again and I would say, ‘Dude, that’s a female dog, and you know what, dogs are extremely athletic,’” Wei laughed. “‘I guess you’re calling me an athlete!’”

However, Wei adds that “the refs have definitely thrown flags for smack-talking before,” for both the school and opponent football teams. Overall, he likes that  the school football team plays “old-fashioned.”

“Just line-up and play,” Wei described the football team etiquette. “You don’t talk to the other team; you talk amongst yourselves. When they trash-talk me, I reply, ‘You shut up and play ball, man. If you’re good, you wouldn’t be talking.’”

Football coach Tim Lugo recalls one of the more memorable offenses of smack-talking in his teaching career: when Los Gatos football players took it too far in their comments on a Facebook group Saratoga football players created in hopes of generating excitement and school spirit for the highly anticipated Saratoga-Los Gatos football game in 2010.

“It got to the point where it started off as smack-talk about them beating us and it eventually just morphed into racial comments,” Lugo said. “That’s when it definitely crosses the line. When you start attacking people personally, there’s no place for that in sports. That was an unfortunate, ugly incident and I’m glad that our guys weren’t involved in it because I would have been disappointed.”

Such tension and competitiveness is found more at the varsity level rather than JV, Wei says. The JV games, he notes, are more about development.

“The more something’s at stake, the more people who are watching, the more trash-talking there is,” Wei said. “There is so much at stake that people are so emotionally invested in it that their emotions come out in the way they talk as well.”

Lugo understands that in the heat of the game, words can fly out of players’ mouths, but still believes that smack-taking shouldn’t be allowed.

“It’s a sportsmanship issue. As long as it’s not drawing attention away from the game, and that it’s not provoking someone, I don’t think you can completely regulate it out of sports,” Lugo said. “As coaches, we do the best we can to make sure that doesn’t take away from what we’re trying to teach kids and that it becomes a prominent part.”