Fighting Hate In Sports

The Winter 2023 issue of ONE MARYLAND Magazine recently arrived in the mailboxes of Terrapin Club members. ONE MARYLAND features stories of strength and perseverance, of determination and spirit. These stories define our athletics program, and this new magazine will allow us to share these stories with you. Over the next few weeks, we will be rolling out these stories on umterps.com as a preview of what you will find in ONE MARYLAND. To receive future issues of the magazine when they debut, please join the Terrapin Club. We hope you enjoy.

You're a joke. Shut up and play. Race-baiting liar. Pathetic. Stay silent. 

These are just a few words and phrases that Maryland volleyball star Rainelle Jones has had targeted at her through comments and DMs on various social media platforms—all for simply speaking out against racial injustice. 

Coming off the summer of 2020, Jones, Maryland’s all-time leader in total blocks and block assists, began using her platform frequently to fight social injustice by speaking out on social media, wearing tape with BLM inscribed on her wrist during games, and kneeling during the national anthem in pregame ceremonies. It’s that last one that has particularly generated a colossal amount of hate directed at Jones. 

The hate reached a boiling point on Nov. 12, 2021 when the Terrapins were in Lincoln, Nebraska to face the Huskers. As she had done for nearly a year to that point, Jones kneeled during the anthem, along with teammates Kaylee Thomas and Maddie Naumann. As brief silence overtook The Bob Devaney Sports Center before the anthem began, a spectator shouted at Jones, “stand up, you piece of trash.” 

A few other crowd members joined in as both the Maryland and Nebraska players and coaches stood completely stunned.

“I just remember not knowing what to do and the people around me and on the other team didn’t know what to do either,” Jones recalled. “I was completely in shock. I of course knew that was a possibility, but you can never really prepare yourself for something like that.”

Jones posted about the incident on her Instagram the next day. And while the majority of the 521 comments expressed support for Jones and her push for social justice, there were still frequent comments using “pathetic”, “disrespectful” and “ignorant”, and that doesn’t even include Jones’ direct messages. 

Instances Of Hate In Sports

Hate in sports is not confined to just Jones’ awful incident—it’s become widespread and frequent in a society that has increasingly lost its ability to engage in civil discourse. 

Additionally, former Maryland wrestler Hudson Taylor turned into a LGBTQ rights advocate because of the hate and homophobia he witnessed in the sports world. A theater major as well as a wrestler, Taylor straddled two very different worlds while in college and one of of the defining experiences for his future work came when he witnessed a theater classmate come out as gay. 

“Just seeing the love, support and acceptance that he received from his peers, and then going back to wrestling and hearing that same joke with a gay slur used for the hundredth time, that was one of my first moments of realizing I wanted to be part of making a change,” Taylor said. “Sports culture doesn’t define us, we define it. We get to choose how we treat each other. That was my first a-ha moment of ‘maybe we don’t have to treat each other this way, maybe we can do better.’”

Shortly after graduating from Maryland, Taylor made a big jump in his mission to ‘do better’, founding Athlete Ally, an organization focused on ending prejudices in sport and empowering the athletic community to champion equality. The organization has brought about improvement in terms of diminishing hate in sport, but it hasn’t come without struggle.

“We receive several calls a month telling us to kill ourselves or that actively wish us harm,” Taylor said. “We always have to monitor the comments of every post we share, as we will often be inundated with waves of anti-LGBTQ hate speech across our social channels. Even when you know that those attitudes exist you can never really prepare for how it makes you feel. There is a part of you that can never unhear or unfeel that hate. It’s something you learn to carry with you through the work, hoping that it will shield you a little bit better the next time you experience it.”

Away from Maryland, hate in sports has been just as prevalent. Go through any school’s social media posts about wearing BLM stickers on the back of their helmets or of introducing LGBTQ pride nights and there’s almost always at least one comment expressing some kind of hate. 

“Disgusting.” 

“Wrong.” 

“Stop it.” 

You can count on those types of words and phrases frequenting the comments of posts pushing for inclusion of marginalized communities, especially in the sports world. And while social media has increasingly been a driver of hate, sometimes it spills over to face-to-face interactions.

Most recently, Rachel Richardson, a Duke volleyball player and friend of Jones’, was allegedly subjected to racial slurs during a match against BYU. Richardson spoke out about the incident after the fact stating, “the slurs and comments grew into threats which caused us to feel unsafe.” BYU conducted an internal investigation and found “no evidence of racial heckling or racial slurs directed at Duke volleyball players”, but Richardson remains firm in recounting her experience there. 

Through social media, Jones stood side-by-side with Richardson, posting a Twitter thread in support. 

“Rachel is a human being and so are we,” Jones wrote in a statement of support. “Sports are meant to bring people together, embracing the love for the team, environment and culture of that sport. Yet somehow IGNORANCE was brought into the space.” 

Once again, both Jones and Richardson were met with a stream of hateful remarks—remarks that both girls chose to keep up on their respective social media.

For Jones, keeping those types of comments up for all to see serves as a living reminder to the rest of the world of just how much hate some people still hold to this day.

“People have asked me a lot if I want to delete the comments, but I don’t because I want people to see it and see these things that people are saying out of hate,” Jones said. “Even though people may be hiding behind a phone or fake face, the words mean something.

“When people get to see the reality of what people are actually thinking when it comes to these negative comments, they see that even though our environment is so much more progressive now, there’s still a lot of people who have hate in their hearts when it comes to kneeling or to fighting against social injustice,” she added.  

Social media has become a particularly dangerous weapon as people have increasingly chosen to hide behind nameless faces and anonymity. Without that accountability of having one’s comments attached to their real name and face, it’s become all too common for people to spout hateful comments that most of them would never make in a face-to-face setting.

Maryland assistant gymnastics coach JJ Ferreira, a gay man who has been outspoken about LGBTQ rights, considers himself lucky to be involved in a sport known for its progressivity. However, he has still found himself the victim of hateful comments from time to time. 

“I used to read those things and feel bad about myself, but now when I read them, I’ve learned to feel bad for those people,” Ferreira said. “They just have to be so unhappy with their own lives if my sexual orientation is taking up that much space in their head. My sexual orientation doesn’t affect my ability to coach, so why does it matter to you as long as my athletes are succeeding?”

Still, Ferreira chooses to ignore and delete the negative comments he sees, citing recent tragedies such as the mass shooting at a LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs on Nov. 19 as evidence of the unfathomable repercussions of hate. 

“I have a fear of what some people are capable of,” Ferreira said. “There are people who are very full of hate, and it’s just not worth finding out what those people are capable of doing.”

Another major aspect of recent hate in sports has grown out of the notion that athletes are there for entertainment and, thus, should not speak on social and political issues and just play their respective sport.

Senior track standout Maxwell Myers has experienced people, including fellow students, looking down at him because of the perceived privileges that come with being a Power Five athlete. 

“A lot of the time people will look at athletes and assume we’re just getting everything for free and that we only got into the university because of athletics and that we aren’t actually smart,” Myers said. “Especially me being a computer science major, I see that a lot where people doubt my intelligence.” 

What people can sometimes fail to recognize, however, is that—behind the touchdowns and three-pointers, lies a real person with their own unique experiences and identities. 

“Nobody is just one aspect of their identity,” Taylor said. “Every athlete carries with them their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their traumas, their lived experiences. I think the folks that try to discourage athlete activism are also trying to segregate a person’s lived experience from their athletic experience. But at the end of the day, those two things will always be connected.”

And for today’s generation of socially-conscious athletes, the shut up and dribble concept is certainly not going to fly. 

“I am an athlete, that’s how I got here, that’s what I’m supposed to do,” Jones said. “But at the same time, because I’ve worked so hard to be an athlete at this level, I’ve created a platform for myself. And I’m going to continue to use that platform to push for change and push for what I know is right.”

In the new world of NIL and athlete empowerment, that platform has even more power—and that’s scary to some people.

“I think it’s pretty cool, especially given the fact that companies can now stand with student-athletes and endorse what they have to say,” Myers said of increased student-athlete activism. “You could always say whatever you wanted on social media, but now having the NIL piece makes your platform way bigger and allows you to reach more people which is really powerful.”

Protecting Student-Athletes At Maryland 

Hate has touched a wide range of athletes across the globe, but student-athletes are particularly susceptible. 

“Student-athletes are oftentimes what I would consider part of a marginalized community,” said Cynthia Edmunds, Maryland’s Senior Associate Athletic Director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion/Organizational Effectiveness. “I know that’s incredibly unpopular to say, but they are marginalized in that they’re human beings who are easy to dehumanize.

“Part of what makes student-athletes vulnerable is that they’re emerging adults, but the other part is a generational difference now in that their voice is power and they’re very clear about that,” Edmunds added. “What I love about this generation is they expect you to engage in complex conversations where you have to lean forward with your vulnerability as well. There’s this power shift now and it’s really fascinating.” 

The other danger for student-athletes is the lack of safeguards that many of them have around them, leaving them more open than many professionals to hate. 

“When you’re an NBA player, you have so many people around to protect you,” said Resa Lovelace, Maryland’s Assistant Athletic Director of Student-Athlete Development. “LeBron James can say what he wants and people may tell him to shut up and dribble, but he still has levels of protections across different spheres. Whereas here at Maryland and at universities across the country, we have student-athletes utilizing their platform with really no guarantee of protection. 

“We can arm our coaches and administrators with resources, but when a player is on a playing field and chooses to kneel, there is no protection,” Lovelace added. “If they choose to tweet about things that are near and dear to the identities they hold, there is nobody that’s checking their social media except for them.”

To combat this, Edmunds, Lovelace and many others in the Maryland community work hard to ensure that they equip the student-athletes with the necessary tools to combat any vicious words thrown their way. 

Responses like “What is it you’re really afraid of?” are encouraged. Staying silent to avoid hate is not. 

“Our vision statement says that we are working here to empower our student-athletes to explore their possibilities and their potential, and not just from a career standpoint,” Lovelace said. “We’re talking about empowering them to use their voice in whatever way that means to them. We want them to keep speaking out.”

Working For A Better Future

The hope for all is that there is eventually a time where hate in sports—and in society overall– fails to exist. To make it there, however, it’s going to take a collective effort.

“Hate is about fear,” Edmunds said. “It's a conscious, emotional disconnection that is intended to dehumanize people. To combat hate, we need to first evaluate what scares us and why. Then, we need to be more self-aware about how our own behaviors, attitudes and decisions impact others and our communities. Consciously or unconsciously, we regularly make decisions to engage or isolate, to be inclusive or divisive. No one person stands alone.”

As cliche as it may sound, growing the love and adoration for celebrating different identities will go a long way, especially in a sphere like college sports where you have athletes coming from all different backgrounds. 

“Sport is so awesome,” Ferreira said. “College sports are really incredible and I feel like there’s so much more love in that. It’s important to keep growing that love and hopefully it drives out the hate.” 

There’s been some change already, with more and more people willing to engage in difficult conversations to overcome prejudice and ignorance. For Jones, it’s that education and dialogue that will take society past the hate. 

“My goal is just to educate and to inform. Hopefully by hearing my story and my experiences, I’m able to change their mindset just a little bit, just to view people who are fighting for social change as a positive impact instead of a negative impact. Those conversations have definitely started switching, which is great, but there’s still more work to be done.”

Negativity and hate  certainly flood social media, but it can also be a space for love, support and acceptance. Take a look at some of the positive responses to Rainelle Jones's Instagram post above.