After days of controversy stun two schools, West Charlotte finally wins the game
By 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, there was already a long line of high school basketball fans, nearly all of them wearing West Charlotte maroon and gold, waiting to see one of the most highly anticipated games in Mecklenburg County in years.
The Lions of West Charlotte were playing the Ardrey Kell Knights in a state quarterfinal. But it was much more than that — a basketball game that served as a welcome exclamation point after two days of turmoil at both schools.
On Sunday night, the N.C. High School Athletic Association forced West Charlotte to move the game from its campus to Vance, mainly due to a lack of seating.
In response, a large group of Lions alumni and fans took their outrage to social media. Some posted the belief that parents from a rich suburban school like Ardrey Kell had pulled strings to force the move because Knight fans were not comfortable coming to a neighborhood school in the heart of west Charlotte.
News then broke Monday night that one of Ardrey Kell’s best players had used Snapchat to direct a racial slur at West Charlotte’s players.
And then on the day of the game, a doctored Instagram post began circulating that depicted a star West Charlotte player threatening to open fire on Ardrey Kell students. West Charlotte coach Jacoby Davis said Tuesday that police were ready to go to the player’s home before the school stepped in and persuaded police that the post was a fake..
All this ramped up the interest — and the tensions — at both schools.
It also seemed to make Tuesday’s playoff meeting, just the second time the schools had ever played each other, more than just a game. At least for Lions alumni, who basically turned Vance’s gym into a home away from home.
Within that electric atmosphere, West Charlotte outscored the Knights 21-7 in a decisive fourth quarter on their way to a 69-53 playoff victory.
In contrast to the off-the-court tensions that preceded it, the game was hard fought and cleanly played. Toward the end , one West Charlotte fan became angry when he was approached by police who then escorted him out of the gym without further incident.
Afterward, West Charlotte supporters said there had been larger point made beyond the final score.
“It’s a huge game for West Charlotte,” said popular local radio host Larry Mims, “and that’s because of everything surrounding the game, and the racial slur coming out. I feel like the community feels like West Charlotte just has to win. They feel like this is for the culture.”
West Charlotte alumni came to the gym wearing letter jackets from the ‘80s and ‘90s, and almost everybody had on something reflecting the school colors.
Among the Lions fans present was 2015 graduate Mathis Gales, who drove down from Raleigh, where he’s a student at N.C. State.
“Heard about it through social media and I heard some friends say they would be at the game,” Gales said. “And they told me everything that was going on. It’s a shame we couldn’t have home-field advantage, but we’ll make this school like the Dub. It’s what we do.”
Sure enough, if there were 1,100 fans at Vance on Tuesday, 900 seemed to be rooting for West Charlotte. Among the overflow crowd was Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Clayton Wilcox. He said when he first heard about the game moving to Vance, his reaction was “Why?”
But then he came to understand the concerns about the limited seating in the West Charlotte gym.
Wilcox said CMS needs to have appropriate-sized venues, to avoid these types of issues in the future, but he hoped the district could learn another lesson, too.
“Some of the challenges of race have not gone away and we have to guard against them,” Wilcox said, “We’ve got to help our kids understand that it’s never OK to use terms that are denigrating. We’ve got to say to other kids that you don’t have to react every time you’re provoked.”
Mallard Creek girls basketball coach Clarence Johnson, recently named the I-MECK 4A conference coach of the year, had a similar message as his superintendent. He hoped everyone — even himself — could learn from what occurred in the the past 48 hours.
“Sometimes we overreact,” Johnson said. “I personally overreacted (to the news the game was being moved). I should’ve known as a coach that once you go to the fourth round (of the playoffs), you need X amount of seats. And once everybody sent that out to me, I backed off a little bit. But it also means we need to put West Charlotte in a situation where they have enough seats on campus.”
As for Ardrey Kell, a successful season ended under a cloud of controversy and with a suspended star player. Several Knights’ families who attended the game declined to talk about the week’s events. After initially answering an Observer’s questions about the controversies preceding the game, another Kell parent ripped the page out of the reporter’s notebook containing her comments.
And Craft?
““I’ve had better weeks,” the Kell coach said after the game. “But I’m proud of my program and my team for really battling back.”
Then he addressed the suspension of his player who made the racist post.
“We learned that social media can really blow up in a hurry,” he said. “As a 17-year-old kid, he’s made a mistake he really, really regrets. And it’s not indicative of our program, but yes I think everybody can learn from that.”
Mims echoed the sentiment.
“We need healing in this community,” Mims added. “It’s unfortunate the situation that happened with the racial slur and everything. For the kids at West Charlotte, and the kids at Ardrey Kell, they just want to play basketball.
“And it’s time we did that.”
Staff Writer Teo Armus contributed.
This story was originally published March 5, 2019 at 10:08 PM.
