Women’s soccer players for Virginia Tech are standing up for their coach after a former teammate received a $100,000 settlement from a dispute alleging she was benched for declining to kneel for a social justice demonstration.
A group of 76 current and former players from the team released a joint statement in support of the Hokies’ head coach, Charles “Chugger” Adair, who was accused in a lawsuit of reducing ex-player Kiersten Hening’s field time based on her political views. After a judge declined to dismiss the suit in December, the school entered a settlement with Hening in which the terms did not include an admission of wrongdoing by her or the coach.
The statement claimed Adair was facing “baseless allegations” over his treatment of Hening before she left the team in 2020 and upheld his position that Hening was removed from her starting position as a midfielder due to her performance on the field. Hening told Fox News in an interview this week that the atmosphere surrounding the team had become “suffocating” and “toxic.”
VIRGINIA TECH SOCCER PLAYER WHO REFUSED TO KNEEL FOR BLM SCORES $100K SETTLEMENT
Statement from 76 current and former members of @HokiesWSoccer regarding Head Coach Chugger Adairhttps://t.co/4pTt46Zxre
— Sons of Saturday #Hokies (@SonsofSatVT) January 9, 2023
Her lawsuit was filed against the coach in March 2021, claiming he violated the player’s First Amendment rights by allegedly retaliating against her decision not to kneel on the field during a social justice demonstration prior to the team’s match on Sept. 12, 2020.
The complaint stemmed from Hening’s specific refusal to kneel during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, alleging that Adair berated her in front of her teammates and said she was “b****ing and moaning” after refusing to kneel.
Adair also released a statement this week, saying he was pleased to have “clarity that this case lacked any standing” without mentioning the $100,000 settlement paid out to Hening.
Hening explained in the interview why she did not feel the urgency to participate in the demonstration, saying, “I didn’t feel like I need to kneel in order to support something.”
“Personally, I felt like I could stand and be in support of something. Personally, I think that the kneeling was very synonymous with the Colin Kaepernick movement and the BLM movement, and I didn’t feel like I needed to,” she added.
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Hening said she supports social justice initiatives but does not believe in the BLM organization’s mission statement, which promotes defunding police and criticizing the nuclear family framework.
Adair began as an associate head coach of the team in 2006 before he was promoted to head coach after the 2010 season.
