*A high school football coach in Arkansas suspended himself from the team’s first game after he caught one of his players waving a Confederate flag at a pep rally.
Jessieville High School football coach Don Phillips benched himself for the team’s season-opening game at Mountain Pine High School last week after a senior player was seen holding the flag on a truck during the rally and parade, the Hot Springs Sentinel Record reported.
There is no school policy banning students from displaying the rebel flag, but he said with all the controversy behind it right now, he feels it’s offensive and disrespectful.
“I knew the ramifications of what might happen,” Phillips told the Sentinel Record. “I know what’s expected of me and what I expect of the team. …If I had been where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there, this would be a nonissue.”
Phillips told the paper he was checking in equipment when the event started and that he later saw the student – a player he had already suspended for three games – waving the flag. Several pictures posted on a Facebook page show the suspended player holding it while he stood on top of a fire truck during the event.
“My first inclination was to climb a fence, go through a bunch of elementary kids and go remove the flag,” Phillips told local news outlet KARK.
While at the pep rally, Coach Phillips said he was approached by several school administrators, asking him not to show up to the game.
“Obviously, they’ve entrusted me to lead our team. They’ve entrusted the young men that are with me to represent the things our school and community and certainly that was lacking on that day,” said Phillips, who agreed with the administrators and sat out the game.
He’s hoping his players take this as a lesson learned.
“There are things in life that you know in your heart that are wrong. People bring up the fact, nowadays, that there are laws that says you can do certain things,” Phillips told KARK. “Well, sometimes just having laws that you can do certain things don’t make them right.”
Watch below:
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