Belle Vernon sees no ‘racial intent’ by football players in controversial social media video

By: Chris Harlan
Monday, December 12, 2022 | 4:58 PM

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The Belle Vernon football players involved in a controversial social media video weren’t trying to racially taunt anyone, said the school’s top administrator, but they will face consequences for including a racial slur.

The TikTok video, which used an audio file popular in the app, was filmed on the team bus after winning a state football title Saturday in Mechanicsburg.

“I honestly don’t believe that there was racial intent there,” superintendent Ken Williams said. “I think they saw a trend that they could get a lot likes on, so they did it. That’s a mixed group of kids on that bus. There are African-American kids and there are white kids. When you see these kids interacting — kids are kids — I honestly don’t think that group even sees color.”

Belle Vernon defeated Neumann-Goretti, 9-8, in the Class 3A championship at Cumberland Valley High School. Williams said he reached out to administrators at the Philadelphia Catholic school and expected to speak with them Monday night.

“Some people want to interpret this as directed at Neumann-Goretti. That is absolutely not the case,” he said.

Belle Vernon launched an investigation into the video, and Williams said the district will discipline the students involved. He called the video “a major emotional letdown” for a school ready to celebrate its first state football title.

“Everybody who was involved, including the student who posted it, took responsibility for it,” he said. “All of those young men have been very stand-up individuals about it. If I can make lemonade out of lemons, I’m proud of them for accepting the responsibility and facing the consequences.”

Along with receiving undisclosed in-school punishment, Williams said the football players involved will meet this week with a member of the WPIAL Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Council with plans to “broaden that conversation to other student-athletes in general.”

The TikTok video trend starts with the individuals looking sad, in this case acting as if they’d lost the state championship game, and then reveals they won with a voice-over that says “Gotcha,” and includes a racial slur.

The Belle Vernon video was captioned, “We really just lost the state championship,” before players held up a sign that read PIAA Class 3A champions. The video was similar in theme and used the same audio as one posted a day earlier by Southern Columbia students after the Class 2A championship, drawing PIAA scrutiny.

Williams said it’s disappointing that a bad decision by some Belle Vernon football players tainted what should be a celebration.

“It was a tremendous sense of disbelief and a major emotional letdown,” Williams said of seeing the video. “Those kids prepare themselves for six or seven months, in season and out of season. They commit to that team and they commit to the school and they do something absolutely remarkable that hasn’t been done in our school district history.

“And now people are concentrating on a 5-second video and not seven months of hard work.”

In a statement shared online Monday, Southern Columbia said students involved in making its “inflammatory” video were banned from extracurricular activities for one calendar year. The school district near Bloomsburg noted that the video was “part of a disturbing viral TikTok trend.”

“Although other teams in our state and in other states have posted similar videos, including the 3A PIAA State Champions, the video posted by one of our players is wholly unacceptable,” Southern Columbia said.

The PIAA also directed Southern Columbia to investigate pictures of hand-drawn signs displayed at a community pep-rally that said “Whip Westinghouse” and “Southern State of Mind.” The school district found those signs “were not intended to carry racial connotations.”

“Several of the slogans showcased as part of this community event were used in previous competitions across different years, sports and opponents,” Southern Columbia said in its statement. “Some were copied from media headlines of previous years’ state title wins. While it may not have been the intent to communicate racially insensitive messaging, we recognize that these messages may have still been hurtful to others.”

Southern Columbia apologized “to anyone harmed by these events,” and said additional social training programs would be instituted “highlighting ways to avoid language that has the potential to be misinterpreted or insensitive.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

Tags: Belle Vernon