‘Very toxic environment.’ Parents of Fayette high school cheerleaders allege discrimination

Parents of some cheerleaders at Frederick Douglass and Henry Clay high schools have enlisted the help of the local NAACP chapter in hopes of addressing concerns about how Black members of the schools’ cheerleading squads have been treated.

The parents have expressed concerns about how their children have been treated by coaches and other cheerleaders at multiple Lexington schools. After the local NAACP chapter released a statement on the issue, Fayette County Public Schools said it would investigate.

Renee Wright said her daughter, a freshman at Frederick Douglass High School, tried out for cheerleading last May and made the varsity squad.

Soon after training began, Wright said, “I started noticing there was segregation among the team.”

She said she mentioned her concern to the coach, and “he acknowledged that there is racial segregation on the team.” She said the coaches said they had been trying to talk about the situation with the girls to make things better.

“You can’t produce winners if your teammates are divided,” Wright said. “They have to treat each other like sisters.”

But things didn’t improve.

She said her daughter experienced bullying from older white cheerleaders who shoulder bumped her in the hallway, and later, after her daughter was injured and unable to practice, she said a coach told her she needed to “turn her cheer bag in” because she was “uninterested.”

Wright said her daughter was reinstated by the athletics director, since proper protocol was not followed for an injured athlete, but in January Wright said her daughter decided to quit the team because she told her mother it felt like she wasn’t wanted.

Trying to get the problems addressed, Wright said, left her worn out.

“Why are these issues that we are still dealing with?” she asked.

“No sport is considered to be a white sport or a Black sport,” she said. “You have to keep going through different levels and different channels. It just becomes so exhausting.”

Multiple parents have expressed concerns about “a lack of equity, racial discrimination, classism, lack of inclusion, and separatism in regards to the operation of cheer programs,” the Lexington-Fayette Branch of the NAACP said in a news release late last month.

The parents also say there have been lapses in following rules set by the Kentucky High School Athletic Association, that cheerleading rules have not been enforced equally for all students and that policies about bullying haven’t been enforced.

They’re concerned about “lack of inclusion in booster clubs for all parents, and civil rights violations when it comes to division between church and state for athletic events.”

“According to parents, the racial and mental trauma these athletes have endured due to coaches and teammates interacting in harmful and abusive ways is discriminatory,” the NAACP said in the release. “For some student athletes this has been going on for years despite parents reaching out to the administration.”

The NAACP said there seems to have been no significant changes despite students and parents speaking up about the issues.

Coaches and athletic directors at Fayette County schools connected to the allegations didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Discrimination concerns have affected students’ mental health

Davita Gatewood, a cheerleading parent who also serves on the Lexington NAACP’s education committee, said her daughter experienced “racially derogatory comments being made, a lot of separatism” and “a lot of classism” as part of the team at Frederick Douglass.

She said her daughter has been called inappropriate names, but the girls involved in the bullying “don’t have any consequence.”

The stress and negativity, she said, have had an affect on her daughter.

“It affects your mental health,” she said. “She’s had panic attacks.”

Gatewood said it also makes her uncomfortable that fundraising and a cheerleading banquet are held at a church every year.

And, she said, “the booster club has, in my opinion, never been inclusive.”

“All parents should be comfortable to join,” she said. “We should all have an opportunity to have a say.”

Gatewood, who has been involved with coaching cheer at Lexington Traditional Magnet School, said she’s also seen Douglass favor one of its feeder schools, Edythe J. Hayes Middle School, over others.

“Make sure all of these girls are prepared for tryouts,” she said.