With the local high school sports season about to begin, officials are announcing strict new spectator rules.

The first game of the season is Thursday at Central High School in Bridgeport, where the new initiative No Names, No Numbers will take place.

The Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference says they will be enforcing it during the fall season to ensure negative comments are not made by fans of the opposing team.

Officials tell News 12 the initiative will prevent fans from targeting players by their name and jersey numbers.

They say social media has exacerbated the issue of negative comments from spectators because they now know more about players on the field and court, making more specific, negative comments towards them.

The FCIAC commissioner says since the pandemic broke, these types of incidents have become more frequent.

"They hadn't been to games in two years and a lot of them hadn't really or doesn't know how to behave at games, they might watch the duke camera crazies on TV for basketball and think that's how they should behave. But the behavior wasn't good, and the comments being made weren't positive," said Dave Schulz, FCIAC commissioner.

The conference plans on enforcing the initiative with the help from crowd control personnel and student leaders.

It will be enforced by 16 schools in the league.