What a sad and pathetic way the Turners Falls High School football players and coaches have been portrayed over the past 10 days.
For those unaware of what transpired on the Powertown gridiron this fall, the Indians celebrated one of the school’s most successful seasons in football. The team went 10-0 en route to winning the Western Massachusetts Division IV-A championship before finally suffering their first loss of the season to Maynard High School in the state semifinals.
Turners rebounded from that loss five days later to win its sixth consecutive Thanksgiving Day game with a 36-0 victory over Greenfield High School.
But instead of celebrating their on-field accomplishments, the players and coaches have seen their images sullied in print and on social media due to what some have referred to as “Chopgate.” That is in reference to the Turkey Day football game when the players emerged from the locker room and began doing the Tomahawk Chop.
“It’s been tough; I feel like we didn’t really get to experience the success of our season and Turkey Day,” Turners senior quarterback Tionne Brown said. “As soon as we got back to school after Thanksgiving break, (administrators) were on us. It’s kind of tough to enjoy it with all that is going on.”
The players are being treated like criminals. Last week, players met with administrators and filled out paperwork about who was responsible for starting the Chop. The issue with the players doing the Chop stems from 2009. Back then, the Gill-Montague Regional School District adopted a policy stating that it believed the Chop and accompanying Florida State fight song was offensive and at that time ordered the band and cheerleaders to stop using it while representing the school.
One would assume the ban also prohibited any sports teams from doing the Chop, although since 2009 it does not appear that the ban on using the Chop or fight song is listed anywhere in the student handbook. People know about the ban, but fans still do the Chop periodically, and I think it’s safe to assume no one thought this would all stem from the team doing it.
“It was a policy made back in 2009, and no one really told us about that,” Brown said.
There are some questions that everyone wants answered as it pertains to all this. Why not ask those involved? Indians head coach Chris Lapointe has been adamant that not only did he not direct the players to do the Chop coming out of halftime, he knew nothing about it until he witnessed it, and at that point he told the players to stop.
“I did not know about it,” Lapointe said. “And as soon as I got done talking to the officials, and I saw them doing it, I told them to stop and the boys stopped.”
Brown backs up his coach. He said the decision to do the Chop was made by the team, and it was designed to pump up the crowd, a crowd that also did the Chop at least once during the game.
“It was completely our decision, none of the coaches had anything to do with it,” he said. “We had a good lead at halftime and we were all pumped up. We didn’t mean for it to cause any problems.”
But people have already made up their minds, and many have taken to social media — that safe haven where spineless people can spout off with, for the most part, no consequences.
Lapointe said he has been inundated with emails labeling him as a “racist,” and saying things like he is raising racist babies. He said he woke up one morning to 43 messages, many of them criticizing him over something he did not direct. In fact, the abuse has been so bad that Lapointe became emotional while we spoke about it on Sunday afternoon.
“It’s been horrible,” he said. “I get messages from people saying that I’m a child who doesn’t take responsibility for his actions, things like that. Honestly, if I screwed up, I would take responsibility.”
Brown, who is African-American, also said that hearing his coach and anyone who supports keeping the Indian nickname be labeled as a racist has been unfair.
“One of the things that has irritated me the most is people being called racists,” Brown explained. “I’ve never experienced any racism. … It’s really sad what’s happened to Coach. We’ve gotten pretty close over the years, and it’s been tough hearing some of the things said about him. He’s just a great coach. I didn’t expect this to spiral out of control.”
The other issue surrounding the Turkey Day game was over a headdress worn by several youngsters on the sidelines.
That headdress, or one like it, has actually been worn at numerous games in the past by a number of people, and it was worn during the school-sanctioned pep rally the night before the Turkey Day game. The superintendent and principal at Turners Falls were both alerted beforehand that a headdress was going to be present, but neither of them saw fit to stop it.
The superintendent, in a statement released Monday, said they did not stop the headdress from being worn because there is no policy prohibiting it.
If both administrators had the opportunity to stop it beforehand and didn’t, why blast the coach?
This entire thing has been blown way out of proportion and it’s gotten to the point that neighbors are hurling insults at each other. People who are preaching about how the use of the Indian nickname is insensitive have been so insensitive to a football coach and players that the irony would be laughable if I hadn’t seen firsthand how much it hurts those involved. And the “Keep the Name” people are just as bad. I have seen the posts on social media directed toward co-workers from some in that group.
Have we forgotten that these are people involved? And good people at that. No one on either side is a bad person. Some people want to keep the name because of school pride, and some want it changed because they perceive the use of it as insensitive and harmful. That shouldn’t be the cause for outrage and anger. But it’s broken down into hate-filled comments that make you wonder how either side can talk about sensitivity or pride. I’m not saying all involved are this way, but there are enough that it ruins any actual constructive dialogue, because that has been all but eliminated at this point.
And what will be left in the wake of all this madness? The school will likely have a new nickname soon and most people will move on, although maybe not everyone. Lapointe won’t forget the anguish he’s experienced these past two weeks. And now, his future with the football program he helped revitalize is up in the air.
Lapointe will go down as one of the most successful coaches in the program’s proud history, and he said that despite rumors to the contrary, he planned to continue coaching after this season. But after being put through what he has in the past few weeks, he said he is going to reassess things. That would be a shame, especially for the players coming up in the program.
Then again, it seems like plenty of people don’t really care about the players or the program, anyhow. Instead of celebrating the players for their accomplishments on the field (winning the WMass title) and off of it (such as the team going around to elementary schools in the district and reading to young kids), the spotlight is on them for doing the Tomahawk Chop.
It’s a sad state of affairs. All of this in the name of sensitivity.
Jason Butynski is a Greenfield native and Recorder sportswriter. His email address is jbutynski@recorder.com. Like him on Facebook and leave your feedback at www.facebook.com/jaybutynski.