Fresno-area soccer teams deal with fallout of racial taunts. What was said, what’s being done
Jasara Gillette, the girls soccer coach at Buchanan High School, is still trying to come to terms with racist taunts directed at her players during crucial overtime penalty kicks in a NorCal championship match Saturday night in the Sacramento suburb of El Dorado Hills.
But the coach of the Buchanan Bears, whose emotionally distraught girls eventually lost the match to host Oak Ridge High School 4-2 on penalty kicks, said failure by the game officials and the California Interscholastic Federation – the governing body for high school athletics in the state – to take swift and decisive action after two of her players were targeted by the insults was unacceptable.
As a result, Gillette told The Bee on Monday that the team will be returning its Northern California Division I runner-up medals and the second-place plaque to the CIF as a measure of protest.
“It just doesn’t seem right,” Gillette told The Bee, after two days of reflection on the incident in which a fan on the Oak Ridge side of the field made barking noises as one of the Bears’ Hispanic players took and missed her penalty kick. As a second player, who is Black, was successfully taking her shot, sounds that Gillette described as “gorilla” noises came from the stands, perhaps from the same fan.
The incident at El Dorado Hills – which was captured on video – came just days after players on another Valley team, the Sanger High School Apaches boys soccer team, and their fans who traveled for their regional quarterfinal match against De La Salle High School in Concord were also reportedly targeted by anti-Hispanic remarks from the home team’s students, fans and others.
Sanger lost the game 4-3 in overtime.
A lengthy social media post alleges that Sanger parents heard comments throughout the game about how the largely Latino visiting team “must be upset because we couldn’t mow the synthetic turf” and asking if Sanger players wanted a burrito. The post also accused one of the people working in the stadium’s press box of stepping out of the booth after the game to tell a group of Sanger parents that “half your team doesn’t speak English” and, “This is America, you need to learn English.”
The fan behavior in Concord was troubling to Sanger High School athletic director Brian Penner.
“Those sort of statements are not right at any occasion,” Penner told The Bee on Monday. “When they are directed at the community where our school is, it hits home.”
Penner said Sanger High officials collected firsthand accounts of the remarks from parents and others and passed the information in writing to administrators at De La Salle, a private, Catholic school, and to CIF.
“In a bigger picture, this sheds light that bigotry and racism is an ongoing challenge in our region and our state,” Penner added. “This is an example of a problem that we need to continue to address. We all need to be vigilant in making sure that our diversity is celebrated rather than dishonored.”
Penner said he hopes that De La Salle will hold “the correct people” accountable for their actions. Sanger High officials planned to meet with CIF and De La Salle representatives on Monday afternoon to further address the incident.
Cary Catalano, a Sanger Unified School District spokesperson, said the CIF “is allowing the two high schools to work through the process together….”
“I think there is still going to be a big push for there to be a more formal interview investigation from the CIF, but I think that we’re going through the initial process right now,” Catalano added.
Host schools, CIF respond
Late last week, De La Salle High president David J. Holquin sent a letter to Sanger High School principal Kristin Coronado and Sanger Unified administrator Jamie Nino saying the alleged behavior at the game was “entirely inappropriate and do not keep with our school standards, expectation and mission.”
“We launched an internal investigation and continue to do proper due diligence and hold individuals accountable who may have violated our standards of conduct,” Holquin wrote. “We have conducted a number of interviews with individuals who were at the game, including administrators, parents and students and will continue to do so.”
“Be assured we neither condone or will tolerate such unacceptable behavior,” the letter concluded.
Of more than 1,000 students who attend De La Salle, just under half are white, while fewer than 20% are Latino or Hispanic, according to the school’s website. Filipino and Asian students represent about 9% of the student body, and 4% are Black or African American.
By contrast, more than 76% of Sanger High’s student body is Latino or Hispanic, according to data from the California Department of Education, while white students make up less than 11%. Only 1.1% of Sanger High’s students are Black or African American.
On Monday, Oak Ridge High’s administrators issued a statement indicating that they are using video and conducting student interviews to identify who shouted the taunts at the Buchanan players.
“This individual’s conduct does not represent the values of our school, district or community,” the statement read. “This explicitly racist action has taken the focus away from two outstanding teams of young women.”
“This incident disgusts our learning community and embarrasses our entire school,” said Aaron Palm, Oak Ridge’s principal. “There is no room for this type of individual behavior anywhere in society.”
The district pledged that the incident will be the subject of discussions this week in each Oak Ridge classroom. “We fully intend that the lessons to be learned as this type of behavior should never go unconfronted or ever be repeated, …” the statement read. “Our desire is that this never happens again, and we will take the thoughtful steps necessary to ensure it’s not repeated.”
More than 68% of the nearly 2,500 students at Oak Ridge are white, while Hispanic/Latino students represent 13%. Just over 1% of Oak Ridge’s students are Black or African American, state data shows.
At Buchanan High in the Clovis Unified School District, the student body is almost 49% white, 33.1% Hispanic/Latino, 11.2% Asian, and 2.6% Black or African American.
CIF media relations spokesperson Rebecca Brutlag said Monday that the organization “takes allegations of unsportsmanlike behavior seriously,” but added that further comment is being put off until investigations by the schools are concluded.
“Regarding the Sanger/De La Salle soccer match, we are aware that the two schools have been in communication regarding the concerns and are working in collaboration with one other to determine what may have occurred,” Brutlag said in an email to The Fresno Bee.
In a CIF statement issued Sunday about the Buchanan-Oak Ridge match, “the CIF finds it unacceptable when those attending a game take away from all the hard work the student-athletes have put in to participate in a championship event.”
“The CIF prohibits discrimination or any acts that are disrespectful or demeaning toward a member school, student athlete or school community,” the statement continued.
Neither the written statement nor Brutlag addressed questions by The Fresno Bee about what punitive or corrective actions, if any, the athletic organization might take once the schools complete their investigations.
Coaches feel their players’ pain
Alex Gutierrez, the Sanger High Apaches coach, said he was sorry that his players and their fans had to endure racist remarks at their match in Concord.
But, “we feel a sense of pride the way (the players) responded, which is they continued to work and played,” Gutierrez said. “They acknowledged those comments were being made towards them, but they bonded together and they didn’t allow those noises and those words to bring them down.”
“It’s terrible these young men had to see that firsthand,” he added. “I don’t know how many of them had experiences prior to this that were like that, but I know it was traumatizing and it’s something that stays with you for a very long time.”
The players were, however, unaware of comments that had been made to their parents and fans until after the game. “After we did our team circle and thanked them for a great season and to keep their head up, parents told us what they were experiencing themselves, Gutierrez said. “They had to witness their parents’ hurt. The ride home was tough.”
In the weekend match between Buchanan and Oak Ridge, a video published by The Sacramento Bee captured audio of the insult emanating from the Oak Ridge stands as Buchanan player Ciara Wilson, who is Black, took her penalty kick. After scoring her goal, Wilson went to the referee and pointed to the Oak Ridge stands. At one point, the video captures someone from the Oak Ridge stands saying, “I want to know who made that monkey sound,” and, “I liked it. Who did it?”
After a brief pause in which Gillette complained to the officials and the Oak Ridge coach was given a yellow card – effectively a “first warning” for a rules violation – the game resumed with Oak Ridge taking its turn from the penalty spot.
“They just brushed me off as an upset coach and said, ‘We’re going to handle it, go back to your bench,’” Gillette said she was told by the game officials. “They didn’t come to me to discuss what their decision was, what they were going to do. There was no moment of saying, ‘Let’s all get together and before we resume the game, let’s figure this out.’”
Gillette said the taunts left her girls emotionally shaken in the decisive moments of the match, with no opportunity to collect themselves before play resumed. “They gave the coach a yellow card, which is nothing,” she said. “Nothing was done, and that’s the hard part.”
Buchanan’s athletic director, James Gambrell, was also disappointed at the officials and the CIF.
“There was zero sense of urgency to have some sort of a consequence at that particular time,” Gambrell told The Fresno Bee. “What nobody understands unless you were there is that our girls team was deeply affected. Our girls were huddled up and crying. … They are no longer in a competitive environment where they are trying to figure out how to execute (penalty kicks).”
“They were basically trying to figure out how to survive that particular environment; they are trying to emotionally survive,” Gambrell added. “I was shocked that they continued (the match). I thought at the very least they would identify the fan and escort them out and they didn’t do that.”
Gambrell and Gillette bore no ill will toward the Oak Ridge players.
“It’s not that I don’t think the other team deserves to have a win,” Gillette said. “This had nothing to do with their players,” several of whom came to her team after the match and were apologetic of the fan’s actions.
Gillette and Gambrell said they believe the match, which was tied when the taunts occurred, should have been concluded and declared a tie or draw. But Gillette’s not holding out much hope that CIF will change the official outcome.
“In hindsight, we should have just left the field and walked off,” Gillette said. But in the moment, with her players upset and some in tears, she added, “this was so jarring, it was difficult to process.” It was, she said, the kind of thing she never considered having to prepare her team to handle.
“I’m white, and I’ve never experienced that racism, but these are the voices that people of color have been experiencing for so long,” said Gillette.
“I’ve been coaching in the Valley for 15 years, and I’ve never had a team experience anything like that before,” she added.
