The Utah women’s basketball team was forced to change hotels last Friday after experiencing what coach Lynne Roberts said was a series of “racial hate crimes” ahead of their first-round NCAA tournament game.
Following the team’s second-round loss to Gonzaga, Roberts told reporters about the incidents but did not go into detail.
Early on Tuesday, KSL.com reported that the N-word was yelled at members of the basketball team, as well as those part of the traveling party, which included cheerleaders and the school band. This reportedly happened multiple times as they were walking to and from a restaurant near their hotel.
Originally, the team was located in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho – more than 30 miles east of the McCarthey Athletic Center in Spokane. Both the NCAA and Gonzaga, the host school, helped the team relocate to a hotel in Spokane for the remainder of their stay.
"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 of the initial incident. "We kept walking, just shaking our heads, like I can't believe that."
While the team continued on, they were met with a similar situation as they left the restaurant.
"I got emotional and started to cry," Green said, adding that she was “numb” for the rest of the night. "I will never forget the sound that I heard, the intimidation of the noise that came from that engine, and the word (N-word). 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."
The team coordinated a way to walk back to the hotel together to ensure their safety.
"Incredibly upsetting for all of us," 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."
The team’s police escort was unable to do anything as they were from Washington and outside of their jurisdiction.
"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.
Following Roberts’ press conference, Gonzaga issued a statement saying that the first priority is the safety and welfare of everyone competing.
"We are frustrated and deeply saddened to know 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 statement said.
Several years ago, Spokane was host to the first and second rounds of the men’s NCAA tournament. At the time, a large regional youth volleyball tournament was also set to take place. Gonzaga received a waiver from the NCAA to allow teams to be housed in Coeur d’Alene.
Utah AD Mark Harlan told KSL.com the team “should not have been" in Coeur d’Alene.
"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."
As of 2018, in the region of Spokane and northern Idaho, at least nine hate groups operate in the region, including Identity Evropa, Proud Boys, ACT for America and America's Promise Ministries, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Utah has since filed a police report on the racial hate crimes, but there have been no updates since the report was filed.
"It was a distraction and upsetting and unfortunate," Roberts said. "This should be a positive for everybody involved. This should be a joyous time for our program and to have kind of a black eye on the experience is unfortunate."
