Albright College offers to reinstate football players who were cut over anthem gestures
A Division III school in Pennsylvania has offered to reinstate three football players who were dismissed from the team for not kneeling and standing at specified times before a game earlier this month.
Backup quarterback Gyree Durante was among the three players initially cut from the Albright College football team for not kneeling during the coin toss and standing during the national anthem before an Oct. 7 game, a decision that the college said was agreed upon by the team.
Durante took a knee during the anthem, while two other unidentified players were cut because they “did not fully kneel” during the coin toss, according to a statement from Dr. Jacquelyn Fetrow, Albright’s president.
In a new statement Monday, however, Fetrow said that an “ongoing review of the details surrounding the game’s events has provided greater clarity.”
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“What we understood to be shared agreement among players, student leaders, and coaches has not been adequately supported,” Fetrow wrote in the statement. “As a result, each of the students dismissed from the football team for failure to comply with the team’s shared agreement established for that day has been offered reinstatement to the team.”
Fetrow added that the "much larger issues of social and racial injustice that were brought into the spotlight ... must be addressed."
It's unclear whether Durante and the other dismissed players have officially rejoined the team. An Albright spokesperson declined a request by Paste BN Sports to speak with coach John Marzka and said only that "conversations with the players are ongoing."
Durante told The Reading Eagle that he kneeled during the national anthem to “silently and peacefully protest all the injustices that are going on in our country,” following in the footsteps of professional football players like former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who first took a knee during the national anthem last season.
Kaepernick remains unsigned and has filed a collusion grievance against NFL owners under the league's collective bargaining agreement
Durante also took a knee during the anthem before Albright’s game on Sept. 30 and told the newspaper that he was warned that doing so again could result in his dismissal.
Various forms of pregame protests have since spread to all levels of football, and to other sports around the world. Over the weekend, German soccer team Hertha Berlin took a knee before its Bundesliga game. In Georgia, five cheerleaders at Kennesaw State were moved off the field to the stadium tunnel for taking a knee during the national anthem. They have said they will still kneel in the tunnel before Kennesaw State’s game Saturday.
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