A new policy from Howard University’s (HU) athletic department is stirring up trouble on campus. Now, the Lady Bison’s women’s basketball coach is speaking out to defend his players who are catching flak for kneeling during the national anthem.
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If you’ve ever been to a HU women’s basketball game, you’d know the team collectively takes a knee during the national anthem. Their protest dates back to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. But nearly six years into the team’s routine demonstration, they were hit with a surprising demand from the athletics department.
“There have been thoughtful internal conversations between athletics leadership, coaches and student-athletes regarding pregame protocols,” Howard athletic director Kery Davis said in a statement. “The current approach is about supporting our students’ freedom of expression while upholding mutual respect for all communities.”
According to The Hilltop, HU athletes are now required to stand for the national anthem. The move came after the team kneeled during a December game against the United States Military Academy. But while critics argued HU’s team was being disrespectful, Howard women’s basketball associate head coach Brian Davis later clarified the real intentions behind the team’s kneeling.
“I think that their personnel kind of took it the wrong way and tried to take it somewhere where it wasn’t,” he told The Hilltop. “We didn’t want to disrespect anybody. That wasn’t our intent. But if we did, we definitely apologized to them and let them know where we stood with it.”
Kneeling during athletic games became national news when former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began honoring the killing of two Black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in 2016.
Davis explained the team– inspired by Kaepernick– started kneeling during “COVID, especially when all the social justice things were happening,” he said. After “all the young men and women Black of color [who] were passing away from the hands of police brutality, we decided to take a stand against social injustice,” he added.
Davis understood the magnitude of playing against the United States Military Academy, but he said it was a collective decision by the team to kneel regardless. He added that many of the athletes’ family members have served in the military.
The coach went on to tell The Hilltop that in response to the new mandate, the women’s team will remain in the locker room to avoid any further backlash. “We don’t want to bring any bad light to Howard University,” Davis said. “We just decided to stay in the locker room now for every game, home and away, and we will continue to do that throughout the rest of the season.”
Members of HU’s cheerleading team also started kneeling in solidarity. Howard isn’t the only college taking a stand against kneeling, shockingly. As the Oklahoman reported, students at Southern Nazarene University even organized a petition to stop a potential school policy preventing athletes from kneeling.
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