Navy quickly shelves offensive motto

Navy’s football coach and players apologized Saturday after quickly changing a motto for the 2019 season — “Load the clip” — that was deemed inappropriate and insensitive in a community still recovering from a fatal shooting last year in the Capital Gazette newsroom, only a few miles from Navymarine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.

“It was a one-minute meeting,” coach Ken Niumatalolo said. “I explained that some people had deemed the motto to be insensitive. Our captains didn’t need to hear another word. (The captains) immediately said, ‘Coach, let’s just change it.’

“We sincerely apologize if it upset anyone, but it was not meant to be taken the way it may have been by some.”

The Annapolis community continues to recover after five people were killed and two others were wounded in the newsroom in June 2018. That tragedy was compounded in September when three people were killed and three wounded in a shooting at a Rite Aid in Aberdeen, Maryland. And hours after Navy players spoke Saturday, mass shootings occurred in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton.

A Capital Gazette reporter had inquired about the motto, which was announced Thursday, prompting Niumatalolo’s meeting with senior captains Ford Higgins, Malcolm Perry, Paul Carothers and Nizaire Cromartie. Carothers, the Capital Gazette noted, was a plebe when his father, a veteran of the U.S. Marshals Service, was killed while leading officers who were making an arrest in 2016.

“I completely empathize with anyone who has lost a family member or close friend to any type of gun violence. I personally know exactly how they feel,” Carothers told reporters. “Because of my experience, I know firsthand how badly it hurts to lose someone you love in that way.”

Navy’s new motto is “Win the Day.”