High school football season begins today and players won’t be the only ones making a statement on who is the winner or the loser. The fans will also be speaking their minds through comments on our Web site. But we have found some fans take it too far, ruthlessly ripping on the young athletes and their coaches.

Over-the-top trash talking has already begun with comments on our high school preview stories. So things don’t get out of hand, it’s time to remind readers of our policy concerning high school athletics, which is stricter than our general policy on comments.

The Deseret News has a longstanding policy in its coverage of high school sports that the athletes and coaches are not criticized. The same goes in comments on prep stories. While there is an acceptable level of “trash talking” when it comes to sports, we think public carping about mistakes by players and coaches has no place at the high school level. Why? Because the athletes are just kids learning how to play to the game and the coaches, who already don’t get paid enough for all the time they put in, don’t deserve the abuse that some parents and others can dish out.

Sometimes the offending comments slip by our moderators. We had a case just last night, where I had to delete a thread of about a half dozen comments that went after a former coach and a current player. My thanks to the alert reader who tipped me off by the comment he submitted. But I am afraid the damage had been done since it concerned a school in a small central Utah town, where word gets around quickly. I can only hope the mean attacks motivate the young man to prove his detractors wrong when he takes the field tonight.

Enjoy the competition this season and keep the comments coming. But for the sake of the kids, let your comments build them up rather than tear them down.