FREMONT, Neb. (AP) — Some fans at a recent Fremont High School girls basketball game aimed racist remarks at the visiting Lincoln High School team, leading to a postgame scuffle among fans of the two teams and to a punch being thrown, administrators from the two districts said.
At least one Lincoln student struck a Fremont student during the fracas after the Feb. 7 game, the districts said in a joint news release Wednesday, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.
“We have found what happened on Friday, Feb. 7, in Fremont is the result of extreme actions by a few individuals. The inappropriate behaviors of those individuals have been addressed by their respective schools,” the districts’ said, though they didn’t say whether any of the student fans were punished.
A Fremont police spokesman told The Associated Press on Thursday that the assault case remains active but there has been no arrest.
Lincoln’s coach, Dominique Kelley-Johnson, said several Fremont fans in the stands were wearing Trump 2020 shirts and hats, and thata man approached her players before the game and said, “Black and Latino unemployment is the lowest it’s ever been,” the Journal Star reported.
The Lincoln team has several black players, though the Fremont team also has minority students.
Kelley-Johnson said her team has moved on, “But it sickens me that how we look still bothers people in 2020.”
Racism and immigration have been hot topics in recent years in Fremont, which is about 45 miles northeast of Lincoln. In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a local ordinance to stand that requires renters to get a $5 permit and swear that they have legal permission to live in the United States. An appeals court had found that the ordinance didn’t discriminate against Latinos or interfere with federal immigration laws.
