Community members are outraged after a high school team experienced blatant racism during a championship game Saturday. The game took place between Orange Glen High School and Coronado High School in California. After the game, which Coronado won, Orange Glen Head Coach Chris Featherly said Coronado Head Coach J.D. Laaperi made disrespectful remarks toward both him and his players, but that’s not all. Coronado supporters took the sports rivalry to another level when they threw tortillas at Orange Glen players, who are mostly Latino, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Videos shared on social media depict at least two players from Coronado, a predominantly white school, throwing tortillas. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, witnesses shared that there were several heated moments on and off the court during the game that preceded the tortilla incident.
Members of the Orange Glen team, specifically the Latino players, were extremely disturbed, Orange Glen Assistant Coach Lizardo Reynoso told CBS San Diego. "They understand that there's a lot of racism and hate going on today, but to top that off with a defeat after working so hard all year, it's like a slap in the face," Reynoso said.
While the school district vowed to take action and apologized for the incident, not every member of Coronado's team believed the incident was wrong. The Chicano Federation shared an Instagram post by a Coronado High School basketball account that claimed the tortilla toss is not racist but known as a tradition at other schools. The since-deleted post compared tossing tortillas at players to tossing confetti.
According to a statement by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), this ideology is shared by members of the Coronado Parent-Teacher-Organization (PTO) Facebook who claimed that “throwing tortillas is like heaving ‘Frisbees’ or ‘graduation caps’ into the air as a ‘celebratory action’.”
“Coronado supporters are trying to play the victim here saying the reaction to the tortilla tossing is ‘extremely upsetting’ to them. Try walking in the shoes of those struck by their projectiles,” the statement issued by LULAC National President Domingo Garcia continued.
“We should have universal condemnation of this activity,” Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher said on Twitter while sharing her own daughter’s experience of racism as a student-athlete. “Parents in SD County know that racist taunts against latino athletes are too commonplace. It’s time to stop it.
“Teach your kids not to be racist,” she continued. “Tortillas are for eating, not throwing.” Gonzalez-Fletcher also called for CIF officials to strip the school of its championship.
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