School fires girls basketball coach, dismisses player after antisemitic incident: report

Updated Jan. 9: Yonkers Public Schools have fired a high school girls basketball coach and dismissed a player from the team as a result of an antisemitic incident Thursday night, the New York Post reported.

After Roosevelt High School’s reported antisemitic comments toward private Jewish school Leffell during an exhibition led to an early end to the game, Yonkers Public Schools Interim Superintendent Dr. Luis Rodriquez and city Mayor Mike Spano issued a joint statement Sunday denouncing the hatred and apologizing directly to the Leffell School for the incident.

“The Yonkers Public Schools, along with the City of Yonkers, sincerely apologize to the students and community of The Leffell School for the painful and offensive comments made to their women’s basketball team during a recent game with Roosevelt High School,” the statement said, according to the New York Post.

As part of the joint statement, the Yonkers Public Schools announced the dismissal of the Roosevelt High School head coach and one player “after a thorough review of videos taken at the game and interviews with those who witnessed the incident.”

Neither the coach nor the player were identified in the statement. However, after his dismissal, former Roosevelt High School coach Bryan Williams reached out to the New York Post to say he was a “scapegoat” for the whole incident.

“I personally did not hear any of it on the court,” Williams said, via the Post. “I do not condone what was allegedly done … I do not condone that. I focus on my team and what we have to try to do to win and be successful.”

Despite claiming to have not heard the comments, the former coach did tell his players to apologize for whatever they said immediately. According to Williams, they never got the chance because of the abrupt ending.

Williams added that he did an “excellent job with those girls” and that the school district “treated me very unfairly” without a proper investigation.

“They needed a scapegoat, and I was it,” he said. “They needed a fall guy.”

Girls basketball players from a private Jewish high school in New York were reportedly met with antisemitic taunts — including “I support Hamas, you f–king Jew” and “Free Palestine” — from their opponents during a recent game that was canceled as a result of the hostility, according to a New York Post exclusive. 

Robin Bosworth, a senior at The Leffell School (Hartsdale, NY), described the first half of her team’s game against Roosevelt High School — a public school in Yonkers — as a “somewhat hostile environment.”

“[S]ubstantially more jabs and comments [were] thrown at the players on our team than what I have experienced in the past,” she wrote in an op-ed from her school paper, The Lion’s Roar.

According to Bosworth, who the Post said is also the paper’s editor-in-chief, things took a turn in the third quarter when Roosevelt players shouted “Free Palestine” and “other antisemitic slurs and curses at us.”

One Roosevelt player allegedly shouted “I support Hamas, you f–king Jew,” according to the New York Public Schools Alliance, a parent-teacher group dedicated to fighting antisemitism, the Post reported.

“I have played a sport every athletic season throughout my high school career, and I have never experienced this kind of hatred directed at one of my teams before,” Bosworth wrote.

Leffell’s head coach, John Tessitore, reportedly spoke to his team and elected to end the game early, according to head of school Michael Kay.

“Our team was playing on the road, and during the course of the game, a small number of players on the opposing team directed hurtful, antisemitic comments toward members of our team,” Kay wrote in a letter to the school community, per the Post.

Roosevelt AD Kyle Calabro apologized and said “the follow-up would be swift and appropriate,” according to Kay, the Post reported.

Roosevelt principal Edward DeChent also apologized to Kay Friday, according to the Post. DeChent reportedly also “outlined a number of disciplinary consequences and educational responses,” including a possible in-person meeting between both teams.”

“I am incredibly proud of the manner in which our players and coaching staff responded to this potentially harrowing incident,” Kay said, via the Post.