Feb. 16 was the day of one of the worst games of my young basketball career. In one of Bear Creek's final regular season basketball games against the Lodi Flames, a lot more than just a basketball game happened. Since I am only a junior on the basketball team, I had only heard about the horrors from the past Lodi games. Seniors had told me about the racial slurs and about how the crowd threw objects at opposing players during the game, but I had no idea what was really about to happen. Sure, I had an idea of what the atmosphere would be like at Lodi's gym from the way the crowd and players behaved when they played us at home earlier in the season. In that game, one of the Lodi players went to the extent of spitting into the Bear Creek section of the crowd. I knew things could only be worse at their gym. Before the game even started, a few of the players and coaches warned the younger players about what to expect. The coaches told us that we would hear racial slurs from the Lodi crowd and receive some cheap shots from the players. They told us we needed to keep our composure, stay focused, and just go out and play basketball. As we took the floor to warm up, a few Bear Creek players were already hearing the n-word from the Lodi crowd. One asked the white players on our team how could they play basketball with a n----- on their team. Racial slurs continued throughout the game, but they weren't the main problem. The Lodi players were playing some of the dirtiest basketball I had ever seen. I'm not saying my teammates or I were a group of perfect angels during the game, but when a player head-butts another player intentionally and cuts them so badly they need to get stitches, a line is crossed between intensity and anger. When a player grabs you in an area where the sun doesn't shine and tries to spit on you, there is something wrong. If my mom or my coaches saw me do anything like that, it would be my last game in a Bear Creek uniform. But the worst part of this whole ordeal was the way the parents conducted themselves at the game. Their behavior was even worse than the students. After the end of the game, a few of the parents tried to start trouble with some of the players from Bear Creek. They went into an area where only our school was supposed to be and began harassing us. True, some Bear Creek players may have added fuel to the fire by making their own comments, but the parents should have been the mature ones in the situation and walked away instead of provoking it. What does it say about parents when they provoke fights with students from another school over a basketball game? Most parents would have been embarrassed about how their kids conducted themselves at the game, but instead, they joined in with them. I am not saying that every person who lives in Lodi is racist or a bad person because the majority of them are not. But the small majority of them who hate other races because of the color of their skin should know that what they are doing is wrong and that America should leave the times of racial prejudice should be behind. I didn't write this editorial to give reasons for why our team lost. It was written to inform everyone about how close racism is to our everyday lives. Even though we may not see racism at our school you can still go 20 miles down the road and witness a cross burning. I want everyone to understand how far we still have to go to win the fight against racism.