This article was originally published in The Examiner on Oct. 27, 2016.
By Eleanor Skelton
Staff Writer
The Beaumont Bulls executive board forfeited the season after the suspension of Coach Rah-Rah Barber, who led the Bulls’ kneeling protests beginning Sept. 10. The executive board says that after his suspension, Barber moved to another league, taking many players with him, forcing the forfeiture, but Barber says this is
untrue.
The Beaumont Bulls youth football team kneeled during the national anthem, following the lead of NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who was drawing attention to
what he sees as racial injustice.
The 11- and 12-year-old boys first kneeled during a game Sept. 10, prompting
death threats on KFDM’s Facebook page and other social media sites.
Team picture day was Oct. 3, but 14 kids and all of the coaches did not show up “to protest Coach Barber’s removal and the level of harassment this has gone to,” said April Parkerson, mother of player Jaelun Parkerson, who helped start the protest.
Parkerson said the board “told us, quit going to the media and we will reinstate
Coach Barber. He was not reinstated after the Oct. 1 game like we were told he would
be.”
“We don’t know when the season was officially canceled; it was all word of mouth
and rumors,” Parkerson said.
Tia Roy, Bay Area Football League, representative for the Bulls, was suspended by the board two weeks ago “due to lack of communication and participation,” she said, but Roy also says she was about to run against Seterria Anderson for executive board president in the elections Saturday, Oct. 22.
Roy said she was the only executive board member backing Coach Barber and the
players.
“DeCarlos Anderson threatened the senior team and said ‘you kneel, you’re gone,’” she
said. “He should never have threatened them. You cannot tell them what to do.”
Roy helped found the Beaumont Bulls 15 years ago and assisted in writing the rules
and bylaws.
“If we were to play this Saturday and win, we would be in the playoffs. As it is right now, we are in a four-way tie in the final seed for the playoff,” Parkerson said. “We are still eligible at this point even though we have forfeited two games.
“We’ve been holding out hope that Barber would be reinstated, our season would be reinstated, and we would continue playing.”
Barber said the board suspended him and informed him that Assistant Coach Jones would be taking his position as head coach Sept. 26 after four years of coaching the team.
“They told me that if we took a knee again, I was going to be suspended. Once they
got a little backlash from that, they retracted and said I was able to coach,” Barber said.
Barber received a text message Sept. 20 after practice requesting him to attend a private meeting Sept. 26 with the board. He says the message also stated that he could not tell any parents about the meeting.
“I just believe that the whole week they were preparing trying to find a reason to
legitimately suspend me,” Barber said.
Barber said the board suspended him for a private text message to parents that didn’t include all parents and for not following proper procedures in releasing an assistant coach.
Barber and his assistant coach had differences over the protest, which the assistant
coach went to the board about.
Barber then released the coach without the approval of the board. Other coaches have had problems with their assistant coaches and were corrected by the board, but no other coach has been suspended for this, Barber says.
“They said I lost control of the team because the parents were talking to the media. And they’re saying I should have been able to control that,” Barber said.
Over the last three years, Barber said three or four other coaches have also been let go
for disagreeing with the board.
Barber said he did not make the kids take a knee but rather “supported his kids and took a knee with them. It was their decision. I wanted to make sure that they knew why they were doing it.”
Barber said that in the executive board election this Saturday, “We were told that our votes don’t count.”
The executive board for the Beaumont Bulls did not respond to multiple requests
for comment after Coach Barber’s suspension, but spoke with The Examiner after forfeiting the rest of this season’s games.
“I removed the head coach from his position, and once I did, a week later he took 14 other kids and they went over to join the Beaumont Longhorns; they left us,” said DeCarlos Anderson, athletic director for the Beaumont Bulls.
Only five or six kids were left on the roster, and they need 13 kids to have a team, according to Anderson.
Anderson said the season wasn’t officially canceled, but they forfeited the remainder of
the Bulls’ games.
“I feel sorry for the kids, but I felt Coach Barber was being selfish to ask the kids to
leave the Beaumont Bulls; the kids basically missed out,” said Anderson. “They still had coaches; they still had games to play.
“Our season is still going on [and] we still have four other teams, it’s just that level that
dropped out.”
Parkerson and Barber confirmed that several Bulls players were considering joining
the Longhorns, but there were only a few games left in the Longhorn season.
Several team parents are holding equipment until the end of the season, protesting the board’s premature end of the season. Barber explained that the parents want to have
the ending banquet and award ceremony.
Eleanor Skelton 