The Chapel Hill High School athletic program is accustomed to being at the top of the heap; the Tigers have a long history of bringing home trophies.

Last week, though, CHHS found itself at the head of a list nobody's going to brag about. According to the North Carolina High School Athletic Association, player ejections for bad behavior -- fighting, taunting and so on -- are way up this year throughout the state. And of all the Triangle-area schools, Chapel Hill and Lee County lead the list with five ejections apiece.

Let's quickly point out that that doesn't mean there's a pattern of poor behavior at CHHS or that the student-athletes there are any more troublesome in terms of sportsmanship than the kids anywhere else. With a sample size so small, a single incident can dramatically inflate the numbers; several of Chapel Hill's ejections were the result of a brief shoving match that flared in the waning seconds of a single football game earlier this fall and led to players from both teams getting tossed.

Still, it's not the kind of stat you want. And statewide, the figures are striking. Ejections jumped from 138 in 2006 to 337 thus far this year, an increase of 144 percent.

By far the biggest increase came in football, where the incidence of players getting booted rose by more than 200 percent, from 69 to 208.

Of the various categories of infraction, fighting is most common, but taunting saw far and away the biggest jump. Last year four players got kicked out of games for taunting; this year that number stands at 76 -- an 1,800 percent increase.

Certainly much of that staggering rise is due to stricter enforcement of sportsmanship rules. The NCHSAA, following the lead of the National Federation of High School Athletic Associations, has made good behavior and sportsmanship points of emphasis. Officials are quicker to give a player the heave-ho than they were a year ago.

But that doesn't explain all of it. High school sports administrators say poor behavior -- showboating, in-your-face displays and so on -- really is on the rise.

That's no surprise, but that doesn't mean it should be tolerated. Boorish behavior in professional sports has become part of the show -- apparently the game itself is no longer sufficiently entertaining -- but the NCHSAA is right to do its best to prevent it from trickling down to high school ranks. Last week state officials increased the length of suspensions for fighting -- from one game to two in football, and from two games to four in all other sports.

High school athletes are still students, and high school coaches are educators. Lesson one should be: Play as hard and as well as you possibly can, but respect your opponents, officials, fans and the game.

All of this is tough on officials. When does spontaneous celebration become showboating? Training is key -- just as officials have to learn what constitutes an illegal block, they have to learn what constitutes an excessive display.

Passion and intensity are part of sports, and nobody wants to drain high school games of their energy and exuberance. But a big part of growing up is about learning appropriate behavior and boundaries. That's as true on the football field as it is anywhere else.