Virginia Tech soccer player who refused to kneel during anthem sues coach for alleged 'abuse and retaliation'
A Virginia Tech soccer player is claiming that her coach berated her and penalized her for declining to kneel for the national anthem.
The lawsuit claims the coach's "tirade" was "so extreme" that it left other team members shocked.
A former Virginia Tech women’s soccer player is suing coach Charles “Chugger” Adair for orchestrating a “campaign of abuse and retaliation” to punish her for standing during the national anthem, according to a local report.
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In a federal lawsuit filed on March 3, junior Kiersten Hening said Adair became so enraged by her refusing to protest the national anthem at UVA’s season opener on Sept. 12, 2020, that during halftime he, “pointing a finger directly in her face,” berated her for “bitching and moaning” and “doing her own thing.”
Hening Lawsuit by Campus Reform
”Coach Adair’s tirade was so extreme, so personally directed at Hening,” the complaint continues. And it “shocked” Hening’s teammates, who rallied to console her when the ordeal was over.
By the team’s third match against Clemson University on Sept. 20, Hening, who started 37 games during her first two seasons as a Virginia Tech Hokie, was allegedly removed from the starting lineup, forcing her, she says, to leave the program to escape behavior so “intolerable she felt compelled to resigned.”
According to the twelve-page complaint, Hening’s teammates apprised Coach Adair of her opposition to protesting the national anthem before the season, asking him to “address the fact that some of his players were ‘racist’ and did not support BLM.”
The following day, Coach Adair allegedly joined other coaches in joking that “some of the players and their families probably thought ‘All Lives Matter.’”
Virginia Tech has declined to comment on pending litigation.
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