Chinle High players allege racial taunts and spitting from the Coolidge side after the playoff loss, to which Arizona lawmakers probe claims and push for an AIA investigation.
A really upsetting incident happened after a high school basketball playoff game in Arizona last Friday night.
The Chinle High School team from the Navajo Nation area played against Coolidge High School in a close 3A quarterfinal match at Coolidge’s gym.
Chinle ended up losing by a score of 64 to 53, but what came next has a lot of people angry and concerned.
People from Chinle say that after the game, some of the players and fans got treated badly. They claim people from the Coolidge side taunted them with mean racial names and even spat on some of the Chinle players.
The claims made the rounds online in no time, and many heard about it.
Arizona State Representative Myron Tsosie, who comes from Chinle and represents that district, heard about it right away because families and fans sent him messages telling him what went on. He also got some videos and people willing to give statements about what they saw.
Tsosie feels this kind of thing has no place at a high school sports event. He pointed out that the Arizona Interscholastic Association, which runs all high school sports in the state, has rules against harassment, and this clearly breaks those rules.
As someone who sits on the Chinle school board too, he started gathering more proof, like those videos and witness accounts. He plans to send an official complaint to the AIA people next week so they can look into it properly.
Let alone Myron, Navajo Nation Delegate Andy Nez got involved as well. He represents some chapters near there, like Crystal Fort, Defiance, Red Lake, and Sawmill.
Nez saw videos that popped up on social media, and one of them seemed to show someone spitting on a Chinle player just from the way the body language looked.
He said tensions can run high in games, but spitting crosses a big line.
Nez asked fans who were at the game to email him what they witnessed, and he put together a report to help Tsosie and also for his own work on committees in the Navajo Nation Council.
The AIA put out a statement on Monday saying they are looking into the whole situation very seriously. They are talking to everyone involved and gathering reports.
Once they finish, they will use their rules to decide what needs to happen. They made it clear they don’t put up with any kind of discriminatory words or actions at games because sports should bring communities together, not tear them apart.
Nez hopes the AIA acts quickly and fairly, and even mentioned that, based on the videos, one possible step could be to remove the Coolidge team from further play since what happened looks like clear discrimination against the Chinle students and fans.
He brought up how there are still big inequities for Native kids in the Southwest, even now in modern times.
Nez also talked about another troubling thing that happened the same night with the Phoenix Central boys team, which has some Diné players named John and Grant Mattingly.
In their game against Sandra Day O’Connor, their mom, Jackie, got threatened by school officials over where she was sitting, and the players walked out.
Nez called that racial profiling too and said it is ridiculous that Native students and families still face this kind of treatment because of who they are.
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