Charles City superintendent wants ‘accountability’ for other school involved in racist incident

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City School District’s superintendent will ask the other members of the Northeast Iowa Conference to hold accountable a school that was involved in an incident of racist taunts yelled at a Comet ballplayer earlier this summer.

Mike Fisher said at the Board of Education meeting Monday that he will present a memo today (Tuesday) at a meeting of the conference superintendents demanding that they see an action plan from the other school “on how we will make sure this never happens again, with clear metrics and results.”

“I’m asking the conference to hold the other school accountable,” Fisher said. “It’s not our job to hold the other school accountable for sportsmanship. I’m asking the conference to take the lead on that.”

The Charles City School District has never publicly identified the other school, the sport or the athlete involved, but it has been reported in the Press that the incident happened at a June 27 away baseball game played against Waverly-Shell Rock.

A fan or fans in outfield bleachers at the Waverly ballpark yelled that Charles City center fielder Jeremiah Chapman should “get back to the fields” and said he should be like George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis, as well as other racial and political taunts.

Chapman, the only Black member of the team, has spoken about the incident with the Press, as well as with other state and national news media.

Fisher said Monday he has also spoken with the executive directors of the Iowa High School Athletic Association, which controls boys sports, and the Iowa High School Girls Athletic Union about “concern that there continues to be systemic issues with racism in the games, and the greater issue of sportsmanship and how we see toxic and unhealthy things happen at games all the time.”

Fisher said he is looking for action plans from the groups, including better education for parents, students and staff, higher accountability with game-site administrators, and a way of “putting some teeth into accountability.”

He suggested one option might be to use the sportsmanship rankings that schools get through the year as the basis for homefield advantage in postseason play.

At least one other conference member is also seeking accountability.

At the New Hampton school board meeting Monday night, Superintendent Jay Jurrens was directed to explore options at the Northeast Iowa Conference meeting today on how to deal with Waverly-Shell Rock, the conference’s largest school.

Jurrens said racist comments could happen anywhere, but the issue has been ongoing when it comes to sportsmanship and he believes Waverly-Shell Rock administrators have not addressed the issue with its students and its fans.

“They have no problem attacking individuals on the field, and it’s a question of values,” Jurrens told board members. “They look at it as the ‘Sixth Man,’ ‘the 12th Man’ type of thing like colleges have. But this is high school sports and there’s no place for that.”

New Hampton school board President Joe Rosonke said, “We need to pursue this, and slide them out of the conference.”

Jurrens told board members that under the NEIC constitution, there’s no way to force a school out of the conference, so board members told him they wanted him to pursue other conference options for New Hampton and to discuss those options with the conference superintendents.

Since the NEIC began crowning a “sportsmanship champion” in 2008, Waverly-Shell Rock has finished last in the league’s sportsmanship ratings every year, although standings haven’t been released for the 2018-19 or 2019-20 school years.

“I don’t know if we’ve done enough to put pressure on them to shape up or leave,” New Hampton board member Damian Baltes said, “but I think we need to see real change or else find something else.”

Fisher said at the Charles City board meeting Monday, “I have been very clear. If we cannot insure our students will remain safe through an action plan we would choose not to play there in the future. We have to move away from unhealthy partnerships.”

The NEIC was formed in 1920 and is one of the oldest high school conferences in the state and currently has seven members. The league has had as many as 10 teams and as few as six. It will drop to six in 2021 when Oelwein departs for the North Iowa Cedar League.

— New Hampton Tribune Editor Bob Fenske contributed to this report.