Wake Forest fans and spectators celebrating after they stormed the court during the Duke-Wake Forest men’s basketball game. | Photo courtesy of ESPN
Story by Caroline Daly
One second, there are 10 basketball players on the court; the next, there are thousands of people. Fans and spectators swarmed the court of Joel Coliseum in Winston-Salem, N.C., after Wake Forest upset No. 8 Duke 83-79, breaking Duke’s five-game win streak.
After the Feb. 24 upset, the topic of court storming flooded the news. Court storming is the rush of fans onto a football field or basketball court after an unexpected victory, a tradition mainly in college sports.
Wake Forest fans rushed onto their home court before the final buzzer sounded off, with 1.8 seconds left, as players from both teams were trying to return to their own team benches. However, one player got caught in the crowd, leaving him with nowhere to go. That player was one of the faces of Duke men’s basketball, sophomore forward, Kyle Filipowski.
“I’m more concerned about the well-being of our guys. [Kyle Filipowski] sprains his ankle. When are we going to ban court-storming? When are we going to ban that?” Duke men’s basketball head coach Jon Scheyer said after the game. “How many times does a player have to get into something where they get punched or they get pushed or they get taunted right in their face. It’s a dangerous thing.”
Filipowski, who had a large impact on the game with 17 points, eight rebounds and five assists, was walking from one sideline to the other near the Duke team bench. This left him right in the middle of the court where fans were running from one side to the other. Filipowski threw his arms up to brace himself for the fan approaching. His right leg hit the leg of a fan running by him, then he spun off balance, seeming as if he twisted his ankle. His Duke teammates and even Scheyer rushed to Filipowski quickly to help him.
“I didn’t really see it. I was the first one off [the court]. I knew it was coming. I saw them lined up. Obviously, it’s uncalled for, for somebody to run into a player,” Duke senior guard Jeremy Roach said.
Chaos was ensuing for the Duke team at that moment. “It’s dangerous and what other sport does that happen?” Scheyer said. “I turn and see Flip [Kyle Filipowski] is just surrounded by students and he’s limping off, we’re carrying him off the court, what sense does that make?”
Filipowski hobbled off the court, showing immense pain. He had to lean his arms on the shoulders of a team manager along with his teammate Stanley Borden to get to the tunnel to the locker room amid the mass of students and fans taking over the entire court. More fans pushed Filipowski as he was slowly making his way off the court.
“I definitely feel like there should be some regulations and fines and how the situation is handled with the amount of security guards – everyone knew it was coming,” Filipowski said. “They were up four with two seconds left. Everyone was just waiting for the moment, and they didn’t do anything to stop it.”
At first, the injury looked like a sprained ankle, but the Duke men’s basketball team soon shared that Filipowski had suffered a knee injury during the court storming. He did not miss any games, as he played in their next game four days later against the Louisville Cardinals.
This incident brought up the question amongst the college sports world: Should court storming be banned to protect student athletes and their safety? Every time someone changed the channel to a sports network, such as ESPN, CBS Sports, NBC Sports or FOX Sports, that was the only topic discussed for days.
“That’s not a situation you want players or fans in,” ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas said. “The best way to avoid that type of dangerous situation, and it is dangerous, is to not let it happen in the first place.”
Questions arose of how it would be possible to ban court storming. Debates started about requiring more security or enforcing larger fines on the universities. There was a concern amongst college basketball players, coaches, members of the media and universities, of this becoming a recurring issue leading up the NCAA March Madness Tournament since court storming happened a lot during the season.
The Duke-Wake Forest court storming event wasn’t the first one this season. In January, No. 1 Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) draft pick Caitlin Clark was involved in a court storming incident. She was knocked down by a fan after her No. 2 Iowa Hawkeyes team was upset by the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio.
“Whether people want to admit it or not, fans are not entitled to be on the court,” Bilas said. “They’re not participants in the game. They’re there as spectators. They’re not part of the game.”
Clark and the fan collided after the game as the fan was running to the middle of the court and filming the scene. Clark seemed shaken as she spun around and dropped to her knees on the floor. This became a large incident in the sports and news worlds, as Clark was arguably one of the biggest stars in college athletics at the time.
“You look around the country and Caitlin Clark, something happens. Now with [Kyle Filipowski] Flip, I don’t know what his status will be. It’s one thing, when I played, at least it was 10 seconds, and you were storming the court,” Scheyer said. “Now, the buzzer doesn’t even go off and they’re running on the floor. This has happened a bunch to us this year.”
That same day of the Iowa court storming, just hours apart, Tulane fans stormed the court after their win against Memphis.
Other court stormings have occurred this past college basketball season – with significant consequences. The Big 12 Conference fined the University of Central Florida (UCF) $25,000 for court storming after an upset against the Kansas men’s basketball team in January of this year. The Southeastern Conference (SEC) fined the University of South Carolina $100,000 after fans rushed the court following an upset against the Kentucky Wildcats in January. The SEC fined Louisiana State University (LSU) $100,000 after they also stormed the court against Kentucky in February of this year.
All college athletics conferences, aside from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), which Duke and Wake Forest are a part of, have policies on fines for court stormings. The ACC does not have a policy or structure of fines for consequences of court storming. The conference also has no clear signs or plans of ever adding in court storming fines and has not made a comment about possible solutions.
According to ESPN, the SEC imposes fines “for any field or court rush that occurs when the visiting team and/or game officials are still on the playing surface.” Fines are typically $100,000 for the first offense, $250,000 for the second offense and $500,000 for the school’s third and subsequent offenses. Also according to ESPN, the Big 12 imposes fines “when the safety of game participants is compromised.”
Following the Duke-Wake Forest court storming, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement: “Across college athletics, we have seen far too many of these incidents that put individuals at serious risk, and it will require the cooperation of all – including spectators – to ensure everyone’s well-being. As a conference, we will continually assess with our schools the best way to protect our student-athletes, coaches, and fans.”
Bilas said he believes that administrators of universities don’t want court storming to stop. They enjoy the visual of the court storm after an upset win, as universities take photos of it happening and put them all over their institution and social media.
As a member of the sports media field, he added: “The truth is, television likes it. We put it on the end of every highlight. When there’s an upset, it shows the court storming. It’s encouraged behavior. On one hand, we’re saying it’s wrong. We’re going to fine institutions when it happens, and then we’re encouraging it.”
Player and team safety is not the only issue around court storming; there is also a concern about the quality of the courts themselves. When a court storming occurs, it can damage the flooring in the stadiums. It takes hours for workers in the stadium to sand and polish the floors for game days and team practices.
As the debates have continued, solutions have been offered as to how court storming can be diminished or, if it does occur, how players and coaches can be protected or stop court storming in total.
Carolina Athletic Association President Elizabeth Kohn, a ticketing and event chair who oversees ticketing for football and basketball, has never dealt with a court storming issue at the Dean E. Smith Center, where the North Carolina men’s basketball team plays. For big wins, North Carolina students typically rush their local downtown area of Franklin Street to celebrate.
However, Kohn said she understands the student perspective of wanting to storm the court. To students, it is typically seen as a fun college experience, rather than a safety issue. Students aren’t thinking about the possible risks of court storming at the moment; they are focused on celebrating their team after an upset win.
“I don’t think students think through that when they’re, you know, trying to court storm,” Kohn said. “It’s hard to think about that when you just won the game”
A possible solution that Kohn offered for students is to incentivize students away from the courts if possible. Having possible celebration areas outside of the stadium in another location is a way to still give students a way to celebrate without celebrating directly on their respective courts. “If there’s nothing else to do, they’re going to want to go to one place they can celebrate,” Kohn said.
Kohn also offered a solution to how to handle court storming if it does happen, rather than entirely eliminating it. Kohn said, “I just stay calm, cool, collected, make sure no one’s on the ground. Try to get them up.”
While Kohn thinks that redirecting students would help, Bilas believes there needs to be stricter guidelines and enforcements from university athletic departments in order to eliminate the dangers of court storming for those in the arena.
“When they come on the floor, don’t let them off. Have the police take everybody’s names down, give them a criminal citation, or arrest them, and it’ll stop tomorrow. If this were something that people thought was serious, law enforcement would jump all over it,” Bilas said. “They can raise the fine level, to something that really makes sense. Or they can hey, let them on, but don’t let them off and then cite everyone criminally or arrest them.”
No matter what the universities decide to do about court storming, it is a tradition that has been around for decades. According to the Associated Press, Kurt Kemper, a Dakota State history professor, said the first known time of court storming was at Madison Square Garden in 1950. The City College of New York became the only school to win both the NIT and NCAA tournaments, so their fans instantly rushed the court. Court storming has been an end-of-game tradition for years, so it is not going away overnight.
Although the college basketball season has ended, the debate around court storming has not. Upsets will continue to happen against unranked teams and fans are hard to control in massive arenas that hold tens of thousands of spectators. The storm will possibly continue brewing on the courts of college basketball teams, in both the men’s and women’s game.
