Over the weekend, the spotlight was on NCAA women’s volleyball, for the worst possible reasons. Duke University sophomore Rachel Richardson was playing at a tournament in the Brigham Young University field house when things turned ugly. As Richardson said in a statement on Sunday, she and the other Black Duke players were “targeted and racially heckled throughout the entirety of the match.”
The heckling fan was not removed by security. A police officer had to be stationed by the Duke bench. The N-word was used repeatedly according to a viral twitter post from Richardson’s godmother, Leslie Pamplin.