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Family says volleyball official forced player to remove hair beads
FOX 26 Reporter Gabby Hart explains what happened and why the player's parents aren't happy.
CYPRESS, Texas - A local father claims his daughter faced hair discrimination during a high school volleyball game after a student was forced to remove beads from her braids before the game started.
Trell Carson says his 14-year-old daughter was humiliated when she was forced to cut the beads out of her hair in front of the entire crowd. Carson says they're all about following the rules, but the only thing is, there's no rule against players wearing beads as long as they're properly secured.
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"I was very hurt and disappointed for my daughter, I was highly upset," Carson said.
Carson says his daughter Santana Harris plays on the Cypress Creek High School volleyball team. Since the start of the season, she's worn braids with beads tightly attached.
However, on Tuesday during an away game versus Jersey Village HS, she was forced to remove those beads.
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"She felt humiliated and disrespected because he was loud and aggressive about it. He told her, hey you knew better, you tried to get away with it that you knew you shouldn't, but you tried to do it anyway," Carson explained.
He says the African American referee not only scolded his daughter, but she and her teammates were forced to spend 30-minutes cutting the beads from her head before the game could start.
"If you know anything about this kind of hair and these beads. it's very hard to get them out, so she was asking the audience and the other team for scissors; one mom had a pocketknife, so she had to use a pocketknife to cut the rubber bands off," he said.
Carson says this was one away game he wasn't able to make it to, but when he picked Santana up, she was visibly upset and told him what happened.
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He looked over the rules and policies, and he says there was nothing stating that hair beads weren't allowed.
FOX 26 reached out to CyFair ISD and they sent us the following statement:
"The district’s athletics administrators followed up with the officials’ organization that runs the contests to make them aware of the individual referee’s ruling on Thursday. In addition, campus administration met with the parent on Friday regarding the concern. Neither CFISD nor UIL have a policy regarding hair beads."
"This is not a story, particularly about black and white, let's just make sure we stand up when somebody's in the wrong," Carson said.
He also says he doesn't want that referee officiating any more of his daughter's games.