UPDATE: Fans’ racist comments spur controversy

Beloit Memorial soccer coach said actions of few certainly don’t reflect on the Elkhorn community

By Kellen Olshefski

SLN Staff

Racist comments made by some Elkhorn fans at Thursday night’s girls soccer matchup with Beloit Memorial has spurred controversy that’s now making news throughout the region.

In an email to Elkhorn Mayor Brian Olson, Gregg Melby of GE Healthcare, who was in attendance at Thursday’s game in Elkhorn to see his niece play, said the Elkhorn student section were chanting “Donald Trump, build a wall,” and “go back to where you came from.”

In an response to an email from Olson, Elkhorn School District Administrator Jason Tadlock said it is true students yelled the phrases in unison, though it was not the student section, but a group of “younger students” off to the sidelines after some Beloit players “flipped off” the Elkhorn students and yelled at them in Spanish to “shut up” for singing the school fight song after scoring goals.

Regardless, Tadlock said in his email the behavior was “out of line,” the district has apologized for the students’ behavior, and the district has addressed the students responsible for the comments and is taking steps to  “assure it doesn’t happen again.”

UPDATE:

In a phone interview Monday afternoon, Beloit Memorial Soccer Coach Brian Denu said he doesn’t think Thursday’s derogatory comments by a few students reflects on Elkhorn’s soccer team, it’s students or the community as a whole.

“I think the thing that bothers me the most is some things happened that shouldn’t have happened, but I certainly don’t want the whole City of Elkhorn to be painted in this light for the actions, mistakes that some young kids made,” he said.

Denu said it was just a small pocket of kids and he wishes it had been reported differently by other news agencies.

“I’ve known BZ (Kayzer) pretty well over the last few years and he’s always been a class act guy,” he said. “It certainly isn’t a reflection of his players or his coaching staff and I’m sure the general population of the kids at Elkhorn are good kids.”

Denu said he hopes this serves as a lesson in the sense that words can have a big impact on kids and people need to be more careful with what they say.

For further details and more comment from Denu, see this week’s edition of the Elkhorn Independent.