Westwood High track coach Tom Davis was fired last week because one of his runners decided to whip off a shirt during training on a 75-degree day. This wasn't a girl, by the way. It was a boy.
And the Westwood High athletic director, Karl Fogel, was so irate about it that Davis thought he was going to lay him out.
"I fully 100 percent was expecting to be swung at," the coach told NECN TV.
That wasn't the end of it. Davis was let go on the spot, in front of his team, and eventually escorted off school property.
"The kids on my team, it was terrible," Davis told the TV station. "Their faces, just pure disgust, pure fear."
The team was doing quite well this year under the second-year coach: one of the relay teams went to nationals less than two months ago and the outdoor team started off 5-0 this spring. But there was an undercurrent of tension at the school as Fogel told Davis that some members of the girls team felt uncomfortable when the boys ran without shirts. Davis even warned his team about possible punishment for not wearing a shirt.
Then, a week ago Friday, the situation boiled over, with Fogel going chest to chest with the coach, according to the Boston Globe.
Since when is jogging without a shirt a crime? And since when does being offended mean someone should lose their job? The lesbian females who complained should be punished, not the coach. I'm sure the entire track team, including most the girls team agrees. As a former track runner myself, I remembered days when running shirtless was more than acceptable. Not only did no one complain, but most of the girls actually preferred it. But that was in a small Midwestern town where heterosexuality was the orientation of choice. Not the enlightened, "liberated" suburbs of Boston.
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