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An Underdog Football Team On a Hot Streak Loses Coach When Its Watermelon Ritual Deemed Racist
By Caroline Schaeffer (1 day ago) | Education, Sports
Academic Magnet, a charter school in North Charleston, SC, is known for its rigorous academic standards and for the excellence its students have achieved.
And this year, they’re known for their football team.
Head coach Bud Walpole has led his team on a six-game winning streak, putting their record at 6-2. It’s the best start in the school’s history, Moultrie News reports, as the team had previously gone 29-70 over the past ten years.
But a tradition the team started when the hot streak began has brought the team under fire and has cost Walpole his job: smashing a watermelon and eating it.
The parent of a player on an opposing football team complained to a Charleston School Board member, claiming the tradition was racist: the parent said the act of smashing a watermelon was racist, and claimed that the team was making “monkey noises” as they were doing it.
The school board member brought it to the principal, Dr. Nancy McGinley, who investigated the matter, The Post and Courier reports.
The students, McGinley said, told Martin and Clayton that the team had participated in a ritual multiple times this season where two students would smash a watermelon with a face drawn on it with a black marker, while the remainder of the team would stand in a circle around the fruit making chanting sounds. McGinley said the image on the watermelon could be considered a “caricature.”
Though the principal said the tradition was “innocent,” the school board conducted their own investigation and fired Coach Walpole on Monday.
The football team, parents, and supporters have rallied behind Walpole. One member of the team, Darius Nwokike, who happens to be African American, began a petition on change.org that asks to reinstate Walpole’s coaching eligibility. As of this writing, it has garnered over 3,800 signatures.
Nwokike explained to The Post and Courier that those “monkey noises” and the faces drawn on the watermelons were anything but racist.
“I’ve heard people say they were monkey chants, which is absolutely not true,” Nwokike said. “They were just football shouts, like any you would hear on a football field.”
Nwokike called the faces drawn on the watermelons “smiley faces.”
“They were just faces, they weren’t provocative at all,” he said. “They were just like simple smiley faces.”
The firing has roiled the community, with hundreds of parents, former players, and students coming to Walpole’s defense. An editorial written in the Charleston City Paper referring to the collective student body as “racist douchebags” prompted emails and letters from students addressing the situation.
Coach Walpole, in the meantime, just wants to return to doing what he loves – coaching the Raptor football team:
Walpole said Tuesday that “he would love nothing more than to continue my coaching career at Academic Magnet” and that the players’ celebration was “never intended to be offensive to anyone.”
The Raptors have two remaining football games this season. As of this writing, the team will be playing without their beloved coach.
Image credit: The Post and Courier
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