Navigating the New Food Policy at Sporting Events

Kasey Gragg serves Baylor Gragg and Riley Wilson at the football game concession stand. Photo Credit: Abbi Clark

Abbi Clark, Sports Desk Lead for The Powderhorn

Watauga High School’s fall athletics are already in full swing, and the sports come with fans. For years, Watauga students and families have enjoyed spending their Friday nights watching and dressing out for the school’s varsity football games. Historically, Watauga has had a lenient and relaxed atmosphere regarding the football games and other athletic events, but that has changed since administration released a new policy for the bigger athletic events, including football games, basketball games, and volleyball matches. 

The new policy has three new rules for the previously mentioned athletic events. These are: 1. Attendees must walk through a metal detector upon entering; 2. Any bag larger than 4.5” x 6.5” must be clear; and 3. No outside food or drinks are permitted. Though all of these changes are unfamiliar to most Watauga students and families, guests with food allergies and dietary restrictions are most concerned about the inability to bring in outside food and drinks. 

“The reasoning behind the policy is ultimately for safety, to prevent people from bringing in alcohol, or things they're not supposed to bring to provide a safer environment. That's the ultimate goal,” said Dustin Kerley, Athletic Director. “There are always some other things that get brought up when stuff like that happens or some unintended consequences.” 

Though safety is the main goal when making a change like this, the unintended consequences are going to affect certain guests including those with dietary restrictions, such as student body president and yearbook editor-in-chief, Sydney Moretz. Sydney is vegan, which means she can’t eat any animal products, and if she does she can get extremely sick. 

“I often take pictures [at sporting events] for yearbook and I'm coming to the game straight from cross country practice, or from a student council event after school,” said Moretz. “So it's hard for me to sometimes eat food when I would be eating dinner, because there's no food of sustenance that I can buy at concessions. And if I can't bring in my own dinner or my own food, it makes it really hard for me to eat.” 

Since Moretz has few food options through the concession stands at games. She has to either miss parts of the game, messing with her yearbook schedule, or wait until after the game before she can finally eat.

Though Moretz may have some inconveniences concerning the new food policy, she can be hopeful knowing that Watauga’s faculty and administration has tried to be lenient when tackling unique situations like hers.

“If somebody comes to the ticket booth and they're trying to get in with outside food or drink, we never just tell them they have to go throw it away,” said Daniel Machon, Assistant Principal. “We've had some tables that are set up, and we allow folks to go sit and finish whatever they're eating beforehand.”

Not only will food be allowed to be finished beforehand, but certain circumstances have allowed special accommodations to be made for those who need it. 

“We talked about things like diabetics or nursing mothers or people with really small children that might have a diaper bag or might have to have baby bottles or food allergies,” said Kerley, “We're going to be flexible with those things and try to be accommodating to those who need to have certain things for health reasons, safety reasons, or they just have small children, or anything that is really important for them to be able to function.”

As long as the proper communication is provided beforehand, administration will be lenient and use “common sense” when dealing with unique situations and those with food allergies and dietary restrictions.

“We tried our best to alleviate as many concerns as possible on the front end, because anytime you have new policies or changes, things aren't going to be the same as they always have been, there's always going to be some hurdles right to overcome, after the fact that maybe didn't intend on or didn't think about,” said Kerley. “But the ultimate goal for all of those three things that we're trying to do this year, for metal detection, for no outside food and drink and for clear bags, is the safety of everybody there.”