Texas high school coach and United States military veteran Ronnie Ray Mitchem has exactly zero time for his players disrespecting the flag and our national anthem.
Moments after two of his star players took a knee during the anthem on Friday, Mitchem cut the boys from the team and made them give back their uniforms.
Victory & Praise Christian Academy football stars Cedric Ingram-Lewis and Larry McCullough planned their Friday protest in advance, and informed Mitchem of their plans, reports ABC News.
Mitchem said he warned the players that their protest would have consequences: “I told ’em the day of practice, Thursday, if they do that, you’re career as a Shark is over.”
The boys claimed they were protesting racial injustice, taking a cue from NFL players, and chose to take a knee during the anthem anyway.
Coach Mitchem, who says he has a longstanding rule for his players to stand during The Star-Spangled Banner, immediately made the boys hand in their uniforms and cut them loose from the team.
“I have nothing against those young men, I love them,” said the private school coach.
“As a veteran,” he explained, “I have a strong view of what I feel is disrespectful.”
“If they feel strongly about that, that’s something that should be addressed. But my whole point was, there is a proper time to do something in a proper way,” said the coach.
Ingram-Lewis and McCullough said that stripping them of their uniforms in front of their teammates and the crowd was humiliating. Ingram-Lewis’ mother compared Coach Mitchem to a slave owner.
“He has a slave master mentality,” she said. “If you were to go back to that, when they wanted to tell us, ‘This is what you are going to do and this is how you do it. And if you didn’t comply then you were beaten or even possibly killed.”
Last Sunday, nearly 200 NFL players took a knee during the playing of the anthem in “solidarity” with kneelers like former 49er Colin Kaepernick and as a way to resist President Trump, or something.
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