From exciting season openers to the highly anticipated homecoming game, football season at high schools all over America are sacred and typically a big deal. Unfortunately for the student-athletes on the River Valley High School football team in Yorba City, California, their season has already come to an abrupt end in a rather shocking manner. A video that recently went viral on social media captured several players from the varsity squad playfully re-enacting a slave auction. What started off as fun and games for the guys quickly snowballed into a citywide controversy that landed on the desk of officials and the district office; they sprang into action by sanctioning the players involved for violating the code of conduct. The suspensions caused the 0-6 varsity football team to lose so many of its players that they were forced to forfeit the remainder of the season.
"We do not have the necessary number of players to safely field the varsity team and must thus forfeit the remainder of the season,” wrote Doreen Osumi, the superintendent of Yuba City Unified School District in an official statement. "I received a copy of a recording of River Valley High School football team members acting out a reprehensible act of a slave auction...The recording clearly demonstrates that this situation was orchestrated and organized, which underscores my concern that students spent time contemplating this terrible act without the slightest regard that this action is hateful and hurtful.”
While the news is especially disheartening for the seniors on the varsity team, the sophomores and juniors who were not involved in the aforementioned incident will be eligible to finish out the football season on the school's JV team.
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Source: MSN
