To the Editor:

Six days after the boys lacrosse team took action against racism by walking off the field, the Perrysburg administration issued a statement with Anthony Wayne, sadly showing they took the easy way out of the situation.

It states, there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the alleged incident and per NFHS Rule 3, Section 6 they must forfeit the game.

The rule simply states, “If the offended team is ahead the score stands; if the offended team is behind or tied, the official score shall be Offended team 1, Opponent 0.”

The administration let this rule guide them in a vacuum without any effort to appeal based on the why the boys walked off.

At the first game, the administration deferred to that school in a vacuum to do a self-investigation; no findings. This is akin to the fox watching the henhouse.

The second time, it was turned over to AW to do a self-investigation; no findings.

There needs to be an independent third-party inquiry to look at the whole picture of why the boys walked off the second time. Treating these two incidents separately is a failure to consider the circumstances in totality.

The message implies that the boys fabricated the incident at the first game so they could concoct a fake pact to later walk out of a second game with a second fabricated incident — and they chose to walk out of championship game with a score of 5-5 at halftime.

This doesn’t pass the smell-test; the boys had nothingto gain. We raise our children to speak up against bullying, racism, etc. These boys did it and we rewarded them with nothing — in fact took away from them.

The system failed them for doing the right thing. If it was AW who walked out, there should be support for those boys and an independent third-party investigation. The message should have said the incident couldn’t specifically be corroborated but acknowledge that something inappropriate happened.

The boys must be allowed to play the second half the game; AW doesn’t want to win that way and Perrysburg does not deserve to lose for taking a stand.

Those who use this slur are emboldened — no cameras, audio, witness looking at the circumstances of both incidents during the investigation? This is another lost opportunity to lead and combat hate speech.

Steve Rodzos

Perrysburg