New Jersey Wrestlers Suspended After Hanging Photo Emerges
Eight members of an unbeaten New Jersey high school wrestling team have been suspended after a photo surfaced showing team members posing with a mannequin in a rival school's colors hanging from a noose.
Phillipsburg High School Principal Greg Troxell announced Thursday during an internal school meeting that the wrestlers would not compete in the district tournament scheduled for Friday and Saturday, said Michael Cherenson, representing the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association.
Troxell would not say whether or not the teens who were suspended were pictured in the photo or if the suspension was related to the photo, Lehighvalleylive.com reported.
Troxell and Phillipsburg athletic administrators did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The photo shows seven white students posing with a dark-colored dummy hanged by its neck, wearing a Paulsboro Wrestling T-shirt. Two of the youths in the photo fashioned their sweatshirt hoods into points. Another is holding a paddle.
The two schools are longtime rivals. Phillipsburg, in northwest New Jersey, is a community of 15,000 where about 85 percent of the population is white. Paulsboro, south of Philadelphia, has about 6,000 residents -- more than one-third of them black, according to NBC Philadelphia.
Cherenson said that NJSIAA officials sent the picture to the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights after they discovered it.
Phillipsburg officials were required to submit a report to NJSIAA on Thursday. After reviewing the report, the association’s Executive Director, Steven J. Timko, said, “the photograph depicts a fundamental disrespect for an opponent, using violent imagery that has no place in high school sports.”
“The NJSIAA will continue to work with the Phillipsburg administration to develop a corrective action plan to ensure that actions like this do not happen in the future,” Timko said.
The eight wrestlers plan to address the public and the press at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, their lawyer told Lehighvalleylive.com.
COURTESY OF LEHIGHVALLEYLIVE.COM
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