MORE DISCUSSION REGARDING THE PEARL RIVER HS INCIDENT

I’ve been doing my WFAN radio show for over 24 years, and I have to tell you: We have covered a lot of timely and controversial topics during that span. But I have to confess that the response and reaction to last week’s show was by far the biggest I have ever encountered.

Lots and lots and lots of listeners had all sorts of opinions and comments about the racial taunting incident at Pearl River HS, and just as importantly, about what kind of lesson should be put forth to help educate the misguided and insensitive spectators who made the monkey noises -- as well as the adults who were in attendance at the game and chose to do nothing to stop this obnoxious behavior.

If you didn’t happen to hear last week’s show, here’s a very brief recap of what I’m talking about…

On Wednesday, Feb 9th, at a game at Pearl River HS between visiting Nyack HS and Pearl River, on three separate occasions when a black player went to the free throw line, very audible monkey and ape noises were made by individuals attending the game.

This behavior had also occurred at an earlier game against Suffern HS when they played at Pearl River.

That’s bad enough. But even worse is that no one – no security staff, no officials, none of the coaches, no adults in the stands — did anything to stop this racial taunting.  Mind you, this ape noise happened at least three times during the game.

In this day and age, that is really, really disappointing. This goes way beyond bad sportsmanship.

So, just to follow up on what’s happening at Pearl River, I made some calls over this past week to the Pearl River school district to see what, if anything, is going to take place. Mind you, this incident is now close to 3 weeks old.

And yet, with the exception of a minor wrist slap that came forth from Section 1 Athletic Council in NYS, I don’t get any sense that anything either of an educational -  or even punitive nature - is coming forth from Pearl River.

I mean, if no action is taken, and taken soon, doesn’t that basically condone the racial taunting that took place?

Look, I fully recognize that this incident was highly embarrassing to the people in that school district, and I’m quite sure that they want all the media focus on this incident to quickly fade away so that people there can forget about it.

But all that being said, Shouldn’t something be done? I may be old school, but just to let this matter go without some sort of positive or proactive announcement as to what the school district plans to do – doesn’t that strike you as more than curious?

I have heard that the school board will, at some point, make a decision on how they are going to proceed…but I’m just curious as to what is taking them so long? Here’s today’s podcast. Listen to the comments from listeners: The Sports Edge with Rick Wolff