Crowd pleads for girls to play
Parents, supporters ask school board to reconsider suspension

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — The three Lady Bengals who were suspended earlier this year, their families and about 30 supporters attended Tuesday night’s public school board meeting pleading for leniency.

The senior girls — Telisha Joe, Courtney Cowboy and Stevie Hudson — have been on suspension from the team since Jan. 3 because of violating team rules regarding drinking alcohol.

With three weeks to go in the season, family and supporters all urged the school board to allow them back on the team, saying they have learned their lesson and deserve “a second chance.”

The discussion came at the end of Tuesday’s Gallup-McKinley County School Board meeting during the community comment segment. Because of this, school board rules only allowed school board members to listen and make no comment.

After the meeting, however, Interim Superintendent Esther Macias talked to the girls and their parents saying she did not think the school board would intervene.

“You broke the rules,” she said.

Grace Cowboy, the mother of one of the three, pointed out that the incident occurred at a nonschool activity. She added that she was still trying to piece together what the three girls were supposed to have done and the circumstances of what happened within the high school that led to the suspensions.

“I’ve heard so many different stories,” she said, adding that she was especially upset about some of the stories that appeared in local papers. “I have never been able to get a straight answer from anyone.”

Edmund Yazzie, the Council delegate from Thoreau, agreed, saying that he was told by administrators at the high school that the girls would eventually be reinstated.

That never happened, he said. Grace Cowboy was also upset that the school did not follow protocol and call parents in for a meeting before the disciplinary action was taken. Macias told parents after the meeting that she agreed this was a violation of school policy and that her office is investigating to find out why this protocol was not followed.

A couple of the speakers pointed out that the evidence against the girls was circumstantial and it was the girls coming forward and admitting to the coaches that they had done wrong that sealed their fate. Their supporters urged the school board to take this into consideration or else the message others would get from this incident is to never tell the truth to a coach.

Randall Joe, the brother of one of the three who were suspended, pointed out that he was a drug counselor and heard stories all of the time from kids he was counseling about something they had done wrong. If they admitted wrongdoing, he said, they were trying to make amends and recognized that they needed to change their future behavior.

“The girls told on themselves,” he said and the school administrators should have looked to helping them and not coming down on them.

One of the players who was suspended afterwards told Macias that an assistant coach had gone so far as to tell the other players on the team not to associate with them “because we are bad influences.”

In the end, however, the students, the families and their supporters were told by Macias that the school district has to stand by its policies.