Two high school football players kicked off team for kneeling during anthem
CROSBY, TX (WCMH) – Two high school football players have been kicked off their private school’s team after taking a knee during the national anthem at their game Friday night.
Cedric Ingram-Lewis and Larry McCullough play on Victory & Praise Christian School’s football team. The pair told KTRK that they approached their coach with a plan to kneel during the Star Spangled Banner and that they were going to follow through with the protest.
After the Ingram-Lewis and McCullough took a knee, their coach, Ronnie Ray Mitchem, kicked the two off the team. Mitchem said that the team as a rule that players cannot kneel during the national anthem.
Mitchem, a veteran, said he stopped watching NFL games all together as players across the country have taken a knee during the anthem, using their platform as professional athletes to protest racial injustices and police brutality.
“There is a proper time to do something in a proper way,” Mitchem said.
Ingram-Lewis’ mother spoke out against Mitchem, saying the players
“He has a slave master mentality,” she told KTRK. “If you were to go back to that when they wanted to tell us ‘This is what you are going to do and this is how you do it,’ and if we didn’t comply, we were beaten, whooped or even killed.”