Racists are trying to ruin a teen track star’s life without knowing the details
Racists were quick to send death threats to a teen track star after a video circulated where she appeared to strike her opponent with a relay baton. However, the incident they’re trying to ruin her life over may have been an accident.
It’s no secret that Black female athletes are held to higher standards than others. We all remember the firestorm that arose when Simone Biles dropped out of the Olympics for her mental health or when Sha’Carri Richardson was barred from the 100 m race over cannabis use during the Olympic trials. Angel Reese has gone through her entire career having every single action intensely scrutinized, even facing attacks for doing the same things as her opponent, Caitlin Clark. So, when a bunch of news outlets and social media users started circulating a video of a perceived assault during a high school track race, they knew what they were doing. They knew the runner in question, high school senior Alaila Everett, would be immediately hit with an onslaught of hatred and racism.
Like clockwork, Fox News was writing insidious headlines about how Everett “bashed opponent’s head.” Every right-winger ran to social media with beyond ridiculous, extreme demands that she be prosecuted to the “fullest extent” of the law and charged with “assaulting” someone with a “deadly weapon” (a.k.a. a hollow track baton). As these people stirred hysteria and hatred, the death threats started pouring in. Of course, no one bothered to actually learn the details or give Everett the benefit of the doubt.
Was the track incident an accident?
A week ago, a video from a high school track meet in Virginia began circulating on social media. The video is only a few seconds long, showing a snapshot of the women’s 4×200 relay race. As the runners round a curve, Everett and high school student Kaelen Tucker are vying for second place. Tucker begins cutting into the lane in front of Everett. Everett’s baton strikes Tucker twice in the head before Tucker falls off to the side of the track. Viewers instantly assumed the strike was intentional, and the video was shared far and wide. Outlets like Good Morning America picked up and circulated the video, going ahead with their stories without a statement from Everett and only sharing Tucker’s account.
After receiving hatred and death threats, Everett finally spoke out, stating the incident was an accident. She explained that the incident was just a matter of the runners getting too close, saying, “She [Tucker] was touching me to the point where I was pumping my arm, and the baton was hitting her arm. I lose my balance – my whole body turns, and then I pump my arms, so she got hit.” In response to Tucker’s family’s allegations that she hasn’t apologized, Everett stated she tried to reach out to Tucker but was blocked.
Meanwhile, Everett’s claim of an accident is plausible. Track and field coaches and officials have pointed out that Tucker cut in front of Everett without having enough room to do so, which easily could’ve caused the accidental baton strike. Lisa Carnes, a USA Track and Field official, agreed that Tucker cut in too early, commenting, “The runner’s elbow hit her arm as she passed too close to the girl on the inside. It was incidental contact on the other girl’s part.” Former athletic director for Portsmouth Public Schools Vince Pugh commented that an umpire should’ve intervened with a yellow flag because the runners got too close for safety. He explained, “When she went off-balanced, her arms went in the air, and then she was still trying to run, and she did one more running stroke, but the girl was right there, and that’s why she got hit with the baton.”
As someone who ran track and field in college, I can also see how it could be an accident. There were many times when I saw runners get too close to the inside rail, lose their balance, and have one arm swing out like Everett’s did for balance before clumsily bringing it down. People don’t understand how fast these races are and the knee-jerk reaction to losing your balance or having someone abruptly cut in front of you during a race. You can’t just instantaneously stop your body from moving. You’ll try to catch yourself and get back into the sprint motion, all in a few seconds, and if someone is too close, they will get hit. If it takes more than one step to regain that balance, the person could be hit again.
Everett’s parents have also pointed out that the alleged assault just doesn’t make sense. They’ve described her as an all-state track star and honor roll student with a bright future. Carnes has backed up the assessment, describing her as “a quiet, friendly, soft-spoken teenage girl who would never do anything like what she’s being accused of.” Again, this isn’t proof she’s innocent, but we should think about this logically. Does it really make sense that an all-state track star and honor roll student with absolutely no history of this kind of behavior would suddenly decide to throw away her career and assault another runner in front of an entire track meet?
Whether it was an accident or not, it’s still under investigation. People are trying to condemn this girl to death and jail without knowing anything. Even if it weren’t an accident, the incident, while terrible and deserving of disciplinary action, still wouldn’t be severe enough to warrant this level of vitriol. Just a couple of days ago, the same people calling to jail a teenage girl were infantilizing a 25-year-old grown man, labeling him a “kid” who shouldn’t have his life ruined because of the numerous hateful, racist posts he made on social media. We all remember a few years back when Brock Turner, also an adult male, was given leniency because he was an “athlete,” and the judge didn’t want to mess up his life by holding him accountable for the egregious crime of rape.
In this case, though, Everett actually is a kid who either had a misfortunate accident or made an utterly unprecedented mistake that there’s little chance she’ll ever make again. Racists, though, want to ruin her life, end her academic and athletic career, and make her fear for her safety before a verdict is even reached on the incident because teenage girls who make mistakes or have accidents aren’t granted the same grace as adult men who knowingly commit crimes and spread hatred.
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