The Leffell School girls’ basketball team recently experienced an incident involving antisemitic slurs and curses during a game against Roosevelt High School-Early College Studies. The incident occurred during the third quarter when players from the opposing team began chanting “free Palestine” and other offensive remarks at the Leffell players. Leffell is a private Jewish school.
Leffell School Girls Basketball Team Faces Anti-Semitic Slurs, Violent Play
The Yonkers Ledger reported on the incident between Roosevelt High and the Leffell School that took place last week. It ranges from the abhorrent to the downright scary.
One player, according to the outlet, reportedly said to a Leffell opponent, “I support Hamas, you f***ing Jew.”
Senior Robin Bosworth penned an op-ed on the escalating tensions being experienced by her Leffell teammates at the hands of the school from Yonkers in the first half.
“Throughout the first half of our game against Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, there was a somewhat hostile environment, with substantially more jabs and comments thrown at the players on our team than what I have experienced in the past,” she wrote.
“Despite this, our team chose to let their aggressiveness fuel us going into the second half of the game, as we continued to play passionately.”
But things got significantly uglier in the third quarter.
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Bosworth went on to recall how “members of our team started to get injured from the other team’s physical style of play.”
“At the end of the quarter, players on the opposing team started shouting ‘Free Palestine’ and other antisemitic slurs and curses at us,” she added.
With one report noting the players voicing support for the Hamas terror organization that killed hundreds of Israelis in a vile attack in October, things were really getting out of hand.
The game was abruptly canceled.
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Things grew so tense that the Leffell School girls’ basketball team had to be escorted out of the arena by security guards.
Roosevelt High School’s athletic director, Kyle Calabro apologized and vowed to take action. That action took shape over the weekend as their coach was fired and a player was kicked off the team.
“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,” a joint statement issued by Yonkers Public Schools interim Superintendent Dr. Luis Rodriguez and Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano reads.
Roosevelt High should have been more attuned to insensitive and inappropriate behavior considering this past May, the boys’ basketball team claimed they were the target of racial slurs from opposing teams.
Not only did they forfeit this game, but the school will have to forfeit the moral high ground when it comes to using slurs against your opponents.
