Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
SPOKANE, Wash. — The NCAA Tournament was supposed to be a fun experience for the University of Utah women's basketball team.
Instead, the team was met with racial hate crimes the first night the team was in its host location.
Utah was sent to Spokane for the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament, but was stationed in a hotel in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho — about 35 minutes away from the McCarthey Athletic Center in Spokane.
On Thursday night, the basketball team — along with members of the band and cheerleading team — gathered together at a restaurant for a dinner to celebrate the season. While walking to the restaurant, a white truck got near the team, revved its engines to make its presence known, and then yelled the N-word toward the team before speeding off.
"We all just were in shock, and we looked at each other like, did we just hear that? ... Everybody was in shock — our cheerleaders, our students that were in that area that heard it clearly were just frozen," Utah deputy athletics director Charmelle Green, who is Black, told KSL.com. "We kept walking, just shaking our heads, like I can't believe that."
The team carried on with its dinner, but two hours later were met with a similar situation as they started to leave the restaurant. This time, though, two trucks were present, revving their engines and making a lot of noise in an intimidating way, while yelling the N-word again to those present.
"I got emotional and started to cry," Green said.
The team then coordinated a way to walk each other back to the hotel in an effort to stay safe and avoid having to go in small groups.
"I went back and just had some alone time," Green said, while adding that she relayed the incident to athletic director Mark Harlan, who had not made the trip to Spokane yet. "I was just numb the entire night."
That numb, shocked feeling was present around the team, as their safety was called into question in a location that has a history of racial incidents.
"Incredibly upsetting for all of us," Utah head coach Lynne Roberts said Monday night. "You think in our world, in athletics and the university settings, it's shocking. There's so much diversity on a college campus and so you're just not exposed to that very often. And so when you are, it's like, you have people say, 'Man, I can't believe that happened.' But racism is real and it happens, and it's awful.
"So for our players, whether they are white, black, green, whatever, no one knew how to handle it and it was really upsetting. And for our players and staff to not feel safe in an NCAA Tournament environment, that's messed up."
Lynne Roberts' response to what happened when her team was staying in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, as part of the NCAA Tournament. pic.twitter.com/H96Enj2tKi
— Josh Furlong (@JFurKSL) March 26, 2024
More pressing, though, was the team's safety since they were in a location where the police escort, who were from Washington, had no jurisdiction over what transpired. And the team simply didn't want to continue to be subjected to racial epithets.
"We were actually rather taken aback by our accommodations, because when we were planning to host we were having similar issues in which we were seeking hotels either in Provo or Park City or Ogden, and the NCAA said no to that, so the fact that we were sent to a place that wasn't even the state that the university who's hosting resides was incredibly problematic," Green said.
Utah worked with the NCAA and Gonzaga, the host school, to move the team to a hotel in Spokane, but the incident left its impact on the team all around.
"I will never forget the sound that I heard, the intimidation of the noise that came from that engine, and the word (N-word)," Green said. "I go to bed and I hear it every night since I've been here. ... I couldn't imagine us having to stay there and relive those moments."
"It was a distraction, and upsetting and unfortunate," Roberts said. "This should be a positive for everybody involved. It should be a joyous time for our program. And to have kind of a black eye on that experiences is unfortunate. ... It was really unfortunate and disappointing, and upsetting, and all the things. When this experience shouldn't be any of those things. The shock of like, 'Wow, I can't believe that happened.' Yeah, I think it happens a lot, and it doesn't get talked about enough."
Gonzaga said the university was made aware of the incidents and worked with the NCAA to "support the security and safety of everyone involved."
"We are frustrated and deeply saddened to know that what should always be an amazing visitor and championship experience was in any way compromised by this situation, for it in no way reflects the values, standards, and beliefs to which we at Gonzaga University hold ourselves accountable," the university said in a prepared statement that was provided to KSL.com.
Harlan called the incident "disturbing" and said he's never experienced anything like what transpired for his school in nearly 30 years of being in the business.
"When we're on the road, we don't want to go through anything that was described," Harlan said to KSL.com. "We should not have been there. I do appreciate the NCAA and Gonzaga moving us from that situation, but we should never have been there in the first place. So a lot of folks need to get home and heal from the whole matter.
"But for Charmelle Green and what she's done in terms of being the director of this group, being the victim of this, along with so many others, is something that is going to take a long time for us all to process. It's not the experience that our student-athletes and our students overall should have experienced."
The university filed a police report on the racial hate crimes, but there have been no updates since the report was filed.
