Two Little Miami High School players are no longer suspended from the team after running into the area with a “fine blue line” flag and a “fine red line” flag.
Before Little Miami on September 11, cornerman Brady Williams and supporter Jared Bentley ran to the area with the flags.
The flags were used with the Blue Lives Matter movement, a group in favor of the police.
In a small message from the Miami Board of Education received through The Enquirer, Little Miami School Board Chair Bobbie Grice said players returned to active prestige after being suspended from the team in the first place.
“The effects show that there was no political motivation in this show of help for lifeguards on 9/11, but there were positions of insubordination,” Grice said. “In the future, Little Miami returns players an active prestige and this factor will be treated as a code of conduct factor of the sports department, with all possible consequences to be controlled through the training staff.
After Friday night’s game, Little Miami Superintendent Gregory Power and the school board conducted an investigation. Williams and Bentley, who are said to be the sons of a policeman and a firefighter respectively, were ordered to run over the box with those flags before the game, but they did anyway.
Grice said the flags that will pass through the tunnel for the rest of the season will be the flag of the United States of America and the flag of the spirit of Little Miami.
“Little Miami Local Schools is saddened to see this story take such a negative turn,” Grice said. “The District enjoys an appointment with local police and fireplace departments. “
After Little Miami first suspended Williams and Bentley, a request from change. org to revoke the suspensions won 19512 signatures.
“(Jared) and Brady pulled out a thin flag of blue and red stripes on the box after they were told not to,” the request says. “The school suspended them indefinitely for supporting their fallen hero (sic). Sign this petition to revive the 2 student-athletes who lost their senior season. “
Megan Adkins says his black son, a third-year student who admires football players, deserves to feel at Little Miami schools and that the flag represents a “rebuttal of the Black Matter movement” and alienates black students.
According to Ohio’s reporting, the Little Miami District has 4,712 academics, of whom 89% (4,206) are white, 1. 9% of academics (92) are black, and 4. 3% of academics (200) are multiracial.
“Obviously, this is a political issue because other people are contacting (president) Donald Trump and they’re getting too angry,” Adkins said. “If you look at the help pages, they’re almost all white. And I get it. People need to help, in what they believe, but not at my son’s expense and his considerations about what the police could do to him just because of the color of his skin.
Donald Trump Jr. responded to initial suspensions on Twitter by saying, “It’s outrageous that those academics have been punished for celebrating our police officers. They showed courage in protecting what they thought was right.
Little Miami is scheduled to play in Loveland on Friday, September 18, confirmed Loveland Athletics director Brian Conatser, and the East Cincinnati Conference online page lists it as deferred.