A California high school basketball team has been stripped of its regional title after some of its mostly white players were caught throwing tortillas at a predominately Latino opposing team following a championship game last month.
Videos of last month’s incident, posted to social media, showed at least two people throwing tortillas at the opposing team’s athletes. Some members of the crowd also appeared to join in, CNN reported.
According to CNN, there were already several heated disputes between the two teams throughout the game, which resulted in a 60-57 victory to Coronado.
In a press release published on Wednesday, the California Interscholastic Federation said that Coronado High School will lose its boys Division 4-A regional championship title because of the “degrading and demeaning behavior” shown by some of its players after their game against Orange Glen High School of Escondido.
The federation said it will also sanction Coronado’s team and place members on probation through the end of the 2024 school year.
In this instance, there is no doubt the act of throwing tortillas at a predominately Latino team is unacceptable and warrants sanctions,” the release states.
CNN reported that the players on the Coronado High School team were mostly white.
The man who bought and distributed the tortillas has since apologized and told The San Diego Union-Tribune there was “absolutely no racial intent” behind his actions.
“I brought the tortillas to the game and provided them to players and cheerleaders to toss out onto the floor of the gym in celebration IF, and they certainly did, win the Regional Championship Game,” Luke Serna, a 40-year-old Coronado High School alumni, said, according to the Associated Press.
Serna also criticized the Coronado Unified School Board’s decision to fire the team’s head coach, JD Laaperi, which was announced shortly after the incident.
Coronado School Board President Lee Pontes has since issued a public apology, adding: “No matter the intent of the tosser, the ethnic implications are unavoidable; they’re undeniable,” the AP reported.
The incident comes several months after a high school sports announcer in Oklahoma was caught using a racial slur when a girls basketball team took the knee during the national anthem. He later blamed the mic slip on his Type 1 Diabetes and spiking sugar levels, which he said can sometimes make him “become disoriented.”
