Announcer hurled racial slurs at high school basketball team for kneeling during national anthem



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On Thursday, the Norman High School Girls’ Basketball Team was scheduled to play in Midwest City in the Oklahoma State 6A Basketball Tournament. The game was broadcast live by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) network.

A video from the livestream shows that when the Norman players knelt during the national anthem, one of the announcers started hurling insults at them.

“Are they kneeling? F ** king n *** ers,” the person said.

“I hope Norman gets his ass kicked,” said the speaker, who has not been officially named.

After a short break, with the national anthem still playing, the insults continued.

“F ** k them. I hope they lose.”

“Come on Midwest City – they’re going to kneel down like that? Damn right,” the announcer said.

The person uses the same insults once more before the sound of the recording is completely cut off.

The school district said in its statement that the advertisers were engaged by the Oklahoma High School Activities Association (OSSAA) for the state tournament.

American football abandons kneeling anthem policy
In a statement, OSSAA admitted that it was “aware that very offensive and inappropriate comments had been made during the NFHS live broadcast” and that it was investigating the incident.

“While we are currently investigating the incident, this crew will no longer be playing games for the remainder of our championships,” the statement said.

The OSSAA added that “this kind of behavior will never be tolerated by anyone representing the NFHS or the OSSAA.”

NFHS said he was “disgusted by the comments made last night” in a press release published Friday.

“The thoughts expressed do not represent the NFHS network in any way and we are outraged that they have found their way into our production,” the organization said in its statement. “We are aggressively investigating the incident and have immediately severed ties with the third-party production team involved.”

In one series of tweets Norman Mayor Breea Clark said on Friday she was “furious and absolutely disgusted at the racist and hateful comments directed at the young women on the Norman High School basketball team.”

The Norman team won the match 53-40. At the start of the game, the team were ranked No.1 in their category with a 17-0 record, according to TD O’Hara, district athletic director.



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