Late yesterday, after the Orlando Faceoff event ended I was informed that racial slurs were sent at 3 players from another team and that one of the families would reach out to me to give me details.  I have not heard from that family yet as I write this. The story has been sent through social media to Kyle Harrison, who published the following on his Twitter:     I clicked on the tweet and started to read the comments and came across a comment by Jeff Katz, which I assumed was the details of what happened. This is what I read:

One of my U11 players was called the N-word. He told me. I called a TO and told the opposing coach. He talked to his player. The player walked over & apologized. Then he was sent home from the tourney. He was the their best player. The other coach didn’t care. Unacceptable.

I then started to look at some of the responses and was pretty surprised about the tenor of the responses, given that I thought they were commenting on an Under-11 team kid in an inappropriate way and started to respond based on my incorrect info. I’ve now been given confirmation that the kids involved were Class of 2021, which means seniors in high school in the coming school year.  That’s a whole different ball game, as in this day and age, if you haven’t learned the lessons of language and attitude you are either not paying attention or you are willingly not learning the lessons of humanity. Having said that, there is no way I can excuse not fully getting the details myself and so I need to apologize to those I responded to with that false impression:   Anish Shroff, my apologies to you:     Dom Starsia, my apology to you:     Greg Gurenlian, my apologies to you:     Harry Alford and Lacrosse Exposed, my apologies to you:     Lesson learned on my part to be more diligent to dig deeper and not make the mistake so often made on social media to react before I’m sure of the situation. I know I’m not 60 Minutes but I did a term as Co-Editor in Chief for the Hobart & William Smith Herald in 1978 so I do know better. As for the incident itself, as a Jew, I’m no stranger to people using slurs towards me.  It never gets better if people don’t look at each other as humans first, last and always.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you isn’t just a religious verse, it’s the foundation of a civil society. No reason to ever forget that.