No booing ban! I'm talking to you, WIAA!

Booo! Boooo! Booooo!

This was the sports symphony of my youth.

I grew up in Philadelphia, where booing is as much an art form as an aria by Handel. I grew up going to games where the fans were as mean as Donald Trump at a Rosie O'Donnell roast.

The motto at Philadelphia games should be, "You pay your money and you work your larynx."

I grew up believing booing was cathartic. It was Prozac for the sports fan.

Eagles fans get ripped because they once booed Santa Claus. But I was there. The guy was skinny. His suit looked cheap, and we learned later — just as we suspected — he was a stand-in for a professional Santa Claus who never made it to Franklin Field.

So we booed him.

Booing is democratic. It is as much a right of dissent as e-mailing our senators, or our editors.

In Philadelphia booing was part of our game-day experience. We even booed the booers if we felt they were booing the wrong player for the wrong reasons.

Now the executive director of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, Mike Colbrese, says he believes boos don't belong in sports, or at least in sports that his organization sanctions.

Colbrese, whom I have the utmost respect for, is right to want to keep a level of decorum at high-school events. We don't want ugly cheers igniting fans and starting fights that spill out into the parking lot after games. And certainly there should be no swearing, no throwing objects on the floor, no serious taunting of players or fans, referees or sportswriters.

Those are self-evident crimes that need to be punished.

But legislating against booing would be taking the rules one step too far.

You might as well banish cheering as well, because that, too, can be distracting and intimidating to opposing players and fans. The WIAA could mandate that all state high-school sports events be played in funereal silence.

One peep and you're out of here. The 12th man be damned.

This discussion reminds me of the days before my senior season of high-school basketball. During my junior year there had been several nasty fights following some of our more heated conference games. Administrators vowed to stop the violence.

They debated ways to do this. Play the games in the afternoon. Play them in empty gyms. Step up police presence. They finally decided, however, to eliminate "noisemakers" from the gym.

That included pep bands, which was an accurate description of our band, but we thought, a lame solution to the problem.

All the extra silence in the gym did was make it easier for us to hear all of the personal attacks from the opposing fans.

Now, I've never believed in getting personal with players, unless of course it was Tie Domi and he was getting his stick in the face of one of my beloved Flyers.

But booing a player when he or she steps to the free-throw line late in a close game? Or booing an official who has made an egregiously bad call? Well, a fan has to vent.

It's unhealthy to keep that kind of anger inside of you. Or at least that's the kind of advice I pay my psychiatrist $180 an hour to give me.

Rising above the boos is a sign of greatness. Most superstars feed off the boos. Former NBA All-Star Reggie Miller comes to mind.

The right to boo is as inalienable to a sports fan as life, liberty and the pursuit of the hotdog vendor.

And don't think I haven't heard the boos before. (Insert e-mail response here).

In 1982, I was a young (relatively) columnist in Portland who was invited to participate in a charity halftime hoop-shoot contest at a Trail Blazers game. At the time I thought it was an honor. Later I learned it was like being asked to be a deer during hunting season.

After several politicians, TV personalities and DJs were introduced to warm applause and took their shots — with the crowd politely cheering them on — it was my turn.

And for the first time in my life I heard the sound of 12,666 fans booing their lungs out — at me.

I wish I could tell you I drained every jumper, looking as cool as Reggie Miller at Madison Square Garden. I didn't. Still, I felt a sense of gratitude toward the 12,666 in Portland.

For those brief few minutes I was back home in Philadelphia. For me, those boos weren't nasty. They were nostalgic.

And they were part of the sporting experience.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists