“It’s dangerous,” Sell said. “I don’t like any situation that puts kids in a situation where they really have to make that hard choice or they have to choose between going against their personal beliefs and jeopardizing whatever position they have on the team.”
In the highly diverse San Francisco Bay Area, he said, “there’s a strong likelihood that on a given team you could have three or four different religions.” For a coach to presume all their players not only are religious but worship the same God, he added, is “not the case, and it’s something that has no place in our public education.”
Meanwhile, Kennedy, who has not returned to coaching yet, said he has received support from peers across the country.
“One thing they don’t want to do is walk on eggshells and people having to hide their faith or their practices,” he said. “You got enough things to think about. The last thing they should be thinking about is, ‘Are my rights being infringed on?’”
“It was really great to have hundreds of coaches just say, ‘Dude, we did it!’ And it was like a big group effort,” Kennedy added. “And a lot of people prayed for this to happen. And it just shows that the Constitution is alive and well.”
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Associated Press writer Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared here.
