Team mired in debate shows unity
After taking knee for one game, players stand together
Cade Hall, a towering Bellarmine College Prep defensive end, has weathered a struggling football team that also has been at the center of a bitter debate about whether high school players should protest during the playing of the national anthem.
So when the loudspeakers malfunctioned Friday night during the “Star Spangled Banner” he and his teammates didn’t flinch.
“Everyone just started singing,” the 6-foot-3, 220-pound team captain said. “That was a really beautiful thing for me.”
Hall, 17, and teammates came together in song after dealing with heady issues since about a dozen Bells kneeled Sept. 29 in a gesture that inflamed alumni emotions and encapsulated the corrosive discourse over football players and social activism.
After a negative fallout that put the Bells in the spotlight, the players and coaches decided last week they would stand together before facing Valley Christian in a West Catholic Football League game at San Jose City College.
“The players who wanted to kneel had done that and got their point across,” Hall said. “It was really good to have the team come together and agree on one thing that helped everyone.”
The once-faithful Bellarmine community has found itself on the faultline of America’s widening fissure over the portrayal of patriotism. One side says kneeling is disrespectful to flag, military and country whereas the other says it is a rejection of racism and inequalities facing minorities.
It has been an awkward position for an all-boys’ Jesuit school with a deep tradition of developing civic-minded graduates since in 1851. This is the school of San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, former mayor Tom McEnery, state Senator Jim Beall and California Supreme Court Justice Ming W. Chin. San Jose police chief Eddie Garcia’s son is on the football team.
The Bells have enjoyed one of the Bay Area’s most successful programs under Mike Janda, the winningest coach in Central Coast Section history. Since Janda took over in 1984, Bellarmine has won 14 league titles, six section championships and a Northern California crown.
It had hoped to rebound from a 7-5 season last year but hasn’t proven to be much better this fall with a 3-4 record after losing to Valley Christian. The middling performance has not helped the school fend off criticism since Bellarmine was thrust into the anthem debate that began a year ago with former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and resurfaced with President Donald Trump taking on NFL players this year.
The action condoned by administrators has led one proud alumnus to resign from coaching the varsity football team. Jacob Malae, a Santa Clara police officer, wrote in his resignation letter, “The act of kneeling during the national anthem doesn’t create dialogue, it creates division. It is unfortunate because the seemingly well-intended act of a few is causing undue harm to the whole.”
California’s oldest secondary school is one of a handful of Bay Area campuses where football players have demonstrated since Kaepernick’s silent protest last year.
Others have included Bishop O’Dowd-Oakland, Castlemont-Oakland, Encinal-Alameda, Mission High-San Francisco and Serra High-San Mateo. While Bellarmine players decided to stand Friday night, some members of teams from Menlo-Atherton and Antioch high schools kneeled.
Castlemont players gained national attention last year when lying down during the anthem before a game attended by Kaepernick. Knights coach Edward Washington had a message for Bellarmine players last week: “Never, ever stop believing in what you believe in and standing up for what’s right,” he said. “The whole Castlemont family thanks them for taking a stand and being a voice when sometimes we can’t be that voice.”
About 80 percent of San Jose High’s players kneeled the same night as Bellarmine’s did. It hardly caused a ripple in the school’s community but coach Anthony Lombardi turned it into a lesson for his players who all stood the other night against Leland.
“We’re not going to have the splintering,” Lombardi said Saturday. “That is what has affected society right now. Even though you may disagree, you still need to show honor.”
The public protests remained a conversational piece this weekend in the Bay Area with the Dallas Cowboys playing Sunday at Levi’s Stadium.
The Cowboys are one of six NFL teams that have not demonstrated during the anthem, and whose influential owner Jerry Jones has taken a hardline stand against such player protests.
High schools officials must deal with an alienating subject in a teaching environment. Menlo-Atherton coach Adhir Ravipati has encouraged honest dialogue since some players took a knee Oct. 6 and again Friday night at Half Moon Bay.
“The thing I told them is there are a lot of issues in the world that their generation is going to have to learn how to solve,” he said. “It’s important for them to understand how to have those conversations together, how to solve issues together and how to take the stand but stand for something and convey their opinion whatever side they are on.”
Eric Biland, a 1981 Bellarmine graduate, agreed with Ravipati’s sentiment but protested the way some Bells’ players delivered their message. He wrote an impassioned letter to school president Chris Meyercord saying Bellarmine is a “place where discussions on all sides of an issue should be rigorously presented and tempered against the philosophies of rational thought and social construct.”
Biland said in an email to this news organization some alumni are frustrated with the administration’s handling of a number of issues, including the anthem protest. He said alumni within his circle might withhold financial support until the current administration is replaced.
Oakland A’s outfielder Mark Canha, a two-sport Bellarmine star a decade ago, sees the anthem protest as aligning with the school’s teachings.
“If going to Bellarmine” and UC Berkeley “taught me anything, it is to try to think for yourself and come up with original ideas,” said Canha, who supported Oakland catcher Bruce Maxwell when he took a knee a week before the Bells did.
Canha, Bellarmine’s 14th Major League player, endorses the protests “as long as people that are involved have thought about the cause and reasons behind kneeling and have put a lot of original thought” into it.
He added the anthem provides a forum for provoking an uncomfortable conversation.
“The whole point is publicity and to be heard,” Canha said. “If you want change you have to do your best to be heard.”