Moses Parts the Red Sea at Catholic High School?
Basketball Fans Have Unique Ritual
A Catholic high school’s fan section has resurrected Moses.
The Central Catholic high school in Lawrence, Mass, has a clever, involved fan section that always comes up with interesting ideas to cheer their team, said Dave DeFillippo, director of community relations for the school. Students and parents come out in full force for athletic games, especially basketball, wearing all red, the school color. Being “the biblical scholars they are,” they’ve even dubbed themselves “The Red Sea,” DeFillippo said.
“The kids come up with these ideas,” DeFillippo said. For the 2009-2010 school year, they even had ‘Moses’ part the “Red Sea” at the beginning of games, he explained, noting, “The year they did that, the basketball team won the division championships!”
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“Whether they’ll continue that this year … probably, but we haven’t seen yet,” he said. “We’ll know once the basketball season gets underway.”
A video of the Moses routine made it onto Yahoo’s sports page Tuesday. A student with longish hair dressed as Moses, armed with a broomstick, comes on to the court and rushes up the bleachers, precisely parting the mass of fans. The fans are remarkably coordinated in their parting – Moses has a direct path as he rushes through the sea of red T-shirts.
“It was a tremendous atmosphere (that year),” said Peter Paladino, director of athletics. “They even started their own Facebook page, where they would rally for all the games and coordinate what they were going to do each game.”
“We had a really great player begin the Moses thing that year,” Paladino said. “He is the one who began the Facebook page and coordinated all the students.”
The motiving player graduated, and that kind of dropped off last year, DeFillippo noted. “But we’re hoping that takes off again this year.”
“We have similar players who can fill that role this year. We’ll have to see,” said Paladino.
Regardless, the fans are always respectful, the directors both said.
“We always tell them be classy, keep it positive and light,” Paladino noted. “We tell them be safe and not offensive.”
DeFillippo said they advise students no to engage in any inappropriate behavior or chanting for the games. “We didn’t hear any negative comments at all the year they did Moses.”
“What they’re going to come up with next year is still up in the air – we’ll know after a few (basketball) games. They usually keep these things among themselves,” he added. “I’m sure they will come up with some clever idea.”
