Yonkers high school boots girls’ basketball coach, player after antisemitic slurs during game
Yonkers canned a high school girls basketball coach and booted a player off the team after an ugly antisemitic incident at a recent game against a Jewish high school, city officials said Sunday.
The Thursday night game between the Leffell School, a private Jewish school in Hartsdale, and Roosevelt High School, a public school in Yonkers, ended early after some kids from Roosevelt shot antisemitic slurs at their opponents — including one who allegedly said, “I support Hamas, you f–king Jew.”
Security guards had to escort Leffell School players off the court following the hostile contest.
On Sunday, Yonkers Public Schools Interim Superintendent Dr. Luis Rodriguez and city Mayor Mike Spano issued a joint statement denouncing the hatred and apologizing for the vitriol the visiting team faced.
“The Yonkers Public Schools, along with the City of Yonkers, sincerely apologize to the students and community of The Leffell School for the painful and offensive comments made to their women’s basketball team during a recent game with Roosevelt High School,” the statement said.
“Collectively, we do not and will not tolerate hate speech of any kind from our students and community,” the statement continued.
“The antisemitic rhetoric reportedly made against the student athletes of The Leffell School are abhorrent, inappropriate and not in line with the values we set forth for our young people.”
The game went off the rails almost immediately, with “substantially more jabs and comments thrown at the players on our team than what I have experienced in the past,” senior player Robin Bosworth wrote in an op-ed for the Lion’s Roar, Leffell’s student-run newspaper.
The Yonkers kids played rough, and throughout the contest they yelled “Free Palestine” or other anti-Jewish statements, Bosworth wrote.
“I have played a sport every athletic season throughout my high school career, and I have never experienced this kind of hatred directed at one of my teams before,” Bosworth said.
An hour into the game, the Leffell players walked off during a timeout as the coaches conferred with each other, then the referees.
Meanwhile, the Roosevelt players kept having words with the Leffell players — until security stepped in, and the refs ended the game.
Roosevelt agreed to a voluntary forfeit, a school spokesperson said.
The next day, Roosevelt’s athletic director and principal apologized to Michael Kay, Leffell’s head of school.
The school’s administration investigated the incident, and “after a thorough review of videos taken at the game and interviews with those who witnessed the incident, the Yonkers Public Schools dismissed the coach and one player from the Roosevelt basketball team,” the joint statement said.
Neither the coach nor the player was identified in the statement.
The district will also give further counseling and guided training sessions to the school community so such a thing doesn’t happen again, Spano and Rodriguez wrote.
Just before their announcement, Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner said he wanted the state Board of Regents to investigate as well, according to Patch.
“No one should be subject to abuse and hate on the grounds of any school district in New York State because of their religion,” Feiner wrote in his letter to the state.
“As history has taught us, silence from good people, particularly silence from leaders, can lead to horrendous consequences.”
