The crowd’s energy during the second round of the girls’ basketball semi-state game against Warsaw was through the roof. As both teams fought to the last minute, with each player carrying months of determination, the audience grew increasingly tense. With that intensity, however, brought an unexpected presence to this memorable game.
Junior guard, Antonette Green and senior forward, Maine Hooks on the girls’ basketball team explained what made this games’ student unique to any other game they’ve experienced.
“They were definitely saying some mean things,” Green said. “You know like fat, ugly, whatever—just like regular things.”
The girls noticed that Warsaw’s student section was more aggressive than most but initially thought nothing of it as it was a high-stake game. As the team migrated to the locker room, each teammate shared their similar experiences and joked around about what the student section said to them as they warmed up. Laughter filled the room all up until Green lightly mentioned what one of the students said to her. “Cotton picker”. Green laughed it off.
“Ant tried to play it off like a joke, because we were all laughing at what they said to us,” Hooks said.” But it was not funny at all”.
As many incidents dealing with racism and protest have taken place in the last decade, many may assume that this issue has since been resolved — but this is far from the truth. Richard Lapchick, from TIDES in Central Florida, states that
“White supremacist acts have been unleashed across the nation—I don’t think the general public knows how extensive [racism] is” (PBS).
While HSE and its athletic directors did the best they could to mitigate the conflict, Hooks still feels as though there could have been more awareness brought to the situation.
“I just feel like when it happened it was super serious, and then it kind of got brushed over a little bit.” Hooks said.
Aside from the schools’ efforts, junior point guard, Kennedy Holman, stepped up and made a public announcement on X (Twitter) about her and her fellow teammates’ experiences with racism. To advocate for this issue, she shares
“With the platform that I have, I want to share and bring awareness to things not just basketball. To my African American teammates who experienced racism this past Saturday from people in the stands, I hear you and I stand by you. Racism is STILL going on and people need to realize”.
Holman provides an inspiring revelation to others, setting the reminder that racism is still so prevalent in today’s society. With this post, Holman tries her best to bring awareness to the presence of racism as a whole.
As a final remark, Hooks urges
“I hope this helps schools realize that they are accountable for what their students say, and this is a part of their program. So, the Warsaw student section is a part of Warsaw, so they need to be held accountable for what happened, and I felt like that didn’t really happen this time, but I hope this is a wakeup call”
With the weight of this incident, the HSE girls’ basketball team hopes their polarizing experience with Warsaw High School serves as an insightful and powerful lesson, inspiring surrounding communities to recognize and prevent injustices such as this in the future. Though it is unlikely, HSE can only hope that instances along this general idea will not take place in the future.
