About a year ago, Attorney General and now-Gov. elect Maura Healey started having discussions about how to address the well-publicized incidents of hate and hazing among high school teams across the state that had stained headlines.
"I wanted to bring people together ... because we need to be really clear," she said. "We need to make sure that our young people are given the opportunity, whether it's to play sports or do anything else that they love, in an environment that's safe and supportive."
That effort culminated in the "Addressing Hate in School Sports" conference at TD Garden Thursday. Coaches, school administrators and other school officials from across the commonwealth took a step toward combating hate with hours of roundtables and conversation. Healey said officials hope to convene 13 regional trainings around the state in the coming months on how to create safe environments for students.
Thursday's push comes after a number of high-profile incidents of hate in school sports, including Duxbury High's football team's use of antisemitic speech and bullying as well as harassment and the use of racial slurs among members of the Danvers boys' hockey team.
The conference was hosted by Healey's office in partnership with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association and the Massachusetts School Administrators’ Association — and attended by representatives of every major Boston professional team.
"I am psyched to look up and see all the different logos represented, to see all of our professional sports teams represented, to see everybody coming together in government to have this conversation and to begin this work today," she said.
Bob Baldwin, executive director of the MIAA, said that what people can do in athletics can carry over into the rest of society.
"Eradicating hate and bias through the platform of sports is a Herculean task, and we cannot do this work alone," he said. "That is why the championing by the Attorney General's office, Gov. elect Healey and all the important players is so important."
Baldwin said that his association started a pilot program last fall for diversity, equity and inclusion that created a discriminatory incident reporting form. He said that, to date, there have been 35 incidents reported to MIAA offices.
Rich Gotham, president of the Boston Celtics, referenced Bill Russell's quote of "there's no such thing as other people's children" when addressing the crowd and their responsibility to model good behavior.
"So while we try to support it and do the right things and shine a light on these issues as sports teams, we can't do the work that you do — and it's a big responsibility and we applaud you for it," he said.
Adrienne Smith, a wide receiver for the Boston Renegades, shared a story of how she played softball as a fourth grader on a team where she was the only Black player. Although she was welcomed by her teammates, she described how they played in another town where she wasn't welcomed and she and her mother were confronted by some of the other team's parents after a game.
Her coach, who she called "Coach Buddy," who was white, stepped in to defuse the situation and made sure she and her mother got to their car safely.
"In my mind, as a child, I carried that with me through junior high school through high school and that's why I'm looking at all of you," she said to the crowd. "Because you are in positions of power, you have the ability to be Coach Buddys and to make sports a safe, loving, caring place for kids."
Healey said she will continue to combat hate, racism and homophobia as governor, and that she expects Attorney General–elect Andrea Campbell to continue with similar programming.
