Sometimes, you just have to take a stand.
Kevin Downes has resigned from his position as the Head Basketball Coach at his alma mater Mahopac High School due to racist behavior of his players. The tweets were sent out after a 43-40 loss in the Section 1 Class AA semifinal on Feb. 27.
Downes met with his Athletic Director and decided that he had to step away. Here is what he had to say according to the Journal News:
I did a lot of soul-searching the last two weeks and just felt like the best thing for me to do was to move on. I was kind of heartbroken over all the stuff that happened — not just the comments that were made but the 200-plus times those comments were liked, favorited and retweeted (on Twitter). It was tough, and it’s been tough on my kids.
Eight players have now been suspended. Here is an example of some of the stuff the players said:
One characterizes Mount Vernon residents as “monkeys”; others refer to absent Mount Vernon fathers.
One reads, “One of the few biological Mount Vernon fathers just tried to sell me crack outside the county center.”
Downes hopes thats that his coaching career isn’t over after this. He had success at his school but sometimes doing the right thing is more important. It had to be extremely difficult for him to walk away from his own school even in a very ugly situation.