In these hyper-connected times, a story like this was bound to blow up and illicit strong opinions.

Very strong opinions.

The story hit the Twitterverse last Tuesday when the West Chester East softball team lost in the PIAA Class 5A semifinals to Lampeter-Strasburg, 5-2.

So, you may ask, what was so remarkable about that?

Well, West Chester East played without the top two hitters in its lineup in one of the biggest games of the season.

Those players, voted team captains before the season, by the way, were absent not because of injury or illness or a family emergency.

Not for any of those worthy reasons.

They missed the game so they could go to the beach for Senior Week.

Their absence started a firestorm. People ranging from their coach, to their teammates to strangers on he internet offered pointed criticism of their decision.

Some of it was downright nasty.

Was some of the criticism warranted?

You bet.

These players made a commitment to their school, coaches and teammates.

They made a commitment to themselves, too, in a way.

When you choose to play a sport — or choose to do anything in life, really — you have to be all in. You can't do anything half-way. It just doesn't work.

It's not fair to the people who are counting on you or yourselves.

What these players did was put themselves first and the team second. That's unacceptable in any setting.

They broke the word they made when they agreed to wear the uniform. They broke their word in one of the worst possible ways.

I don't think there is an argument to be made about that.

However, that's not the point of this column.

I could go on about what a horrible mistake these players made, about who was ultimately at fault (the parents, maybe, for allowing them to make that kind of selfish decision), etc., etc., etc.

What is alarming was the degree of vitriol I saw aimed toward these two teenagers (remember, they're teenagers).

Guess what? Teenagers make really poor decisions sometimes.

Guess what? I made really poor decisions when I was a teenager. Lucky for me, I didn't have to read about how horrible a person I was in long Twitter threads for the better part of a week.

I don't know how young people navigate and survive in a world ruled by social media these days.

I don't know how these young women can handle the ire they have gotten for making this kind of decision.

A lot of lessons can be learned from sports. This decision will haunt them, I'm sure, for the rest of their lives. Hopefully, they'll learn from it and be better for it.

I learned and was molded the most from the bad decisions I made when I was younger.

Lambasting them on social media does no one a service.

Certainly not them and certainly not the ones posting extremely vile and hurtful things.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.