Local coaches disagree with MC&S allegations
Upon arriving home from last Tuesday's state playoff game involving Math, Civics and Sciences Charter High, a local coach said he told his wife he was embarrassed by what he'd just witnessed.
Upon arriving home from last Tuesday's state playoff game involving Math, Civics and Sciences Charter High, a local coach said he told his wife he was embarrassed by what he'd just witnessed.
In a phone call yesterday, the coach, an African-American who wishes to remain anonymous but is known to the Daily News, said he "completely disagrees" with the assertion by Veronica Joyner, MC & S' founder and chief administrative officer, who claims that her school's players, coaches and fans faced racial discrimination while falling to Reading Central Catholic, 83-53, at Coatesville High, in a PIAA Class A second-round game.
"She's completely going in the wrong direction," the coach asserted. "She needs to receive an accurate account of what went on that night."
As many as seven technical fouls were called on the Mighty Elephants and the game was halted with 13.9 seconds remaining when senior guard Kwahmere Gredic threw the ball high into the stands. It hit no one.
Joyner said she is not punishing Gredic.
The coach said he saw a team "whose leader [coach Danny Jackson] allowed them to do whatever they wanted. The word that came to my mind, when watching that team, was 'undisciplined.' Even in dead-ball situations, their players were still up in their opponents' faces, invading their personal spaces.
"It was a farce. He had no control over his players."
Jackson refuted that assertion yesterday.
"The way the game was going in the second half, my team could have easily started fighting or caused some kind of uproar," he said. "At no point did my players do anything physical that would have escalated the situation."
The coach the Daily News spoke with said MC & S' fans were worse.
"Just because I was sitting on that same side, I thought I was going to be guilty by association," he said. "Their most obnoxious fan, a woman, was yelling profanities at the [RCC] spectators on the other side. She even yelled derogatory comments at [RCC's] cheerleaders when they came out to do their routines."
Also yesterday, Southern coach George Anderson, an African-American, felt compelled to contact the Daily News and state that his teams "have never experienced anything like [Joyner] is talking about. And we've been all over."
Anderson mentioned that his Rams traveled outside the Philadelphia area even before the Public League became a PIAA member and have spent roughly a decade competing in tournaments in the Lancaster and York areas.
"We get treated great, and we keep getting invited back," he said.
"Anywhere you play, you're going to face very good, adequate or poor officiating. I've never suspected bias due to race. One part of coaching is dealing with adversity and teaching your kids to get through it without losing control."
Anderson said his players, in tourneys and state playoffs, "have never experienced vitriol about race . . . Well, there was one time, when we faced a racially mixed team. One of their black kids said something. It was the kind of comment you might hear all the time in the Public League, with the black kids saying it to each other."
