Tyler Williams Says Dreadlocks, Discrimination Got Him Kicked Off University Of Arkansas Basketball Team
Tyler Williams is a college basketball player in Arkansas who says he was cut from his team because he wears his hair in dreadlocks.
Williams is a 6-foot guard who was set to be a top returning scorer at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith and according to Williams after meeting with the men’s head basketball coach Jim Boone he felt disrespected. Boone made his feelings known against dreadlocks by telling Williams that he wouldn’t recruit players with a similar hairstyle, The New York Post reported.
“To kick someone off the team just because of their hair, that’s not right,” Williams told The Oklahoman. “I just felt disrespected and devalued after he told me that.”
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Williams recorded the meeting with Boone and his parents.
“When you came in, you had talked about my hair and you not liking it and not wanting to recruit anybody with locks like mine,” Williams told Boone.
“It’s not that we don’t recruit them, but we make it very clear that once they get in here they’re not going to have their hair that way,” the coach replied. “I told you though, because you were here before me, that I didn’t think it was fair for me to tell you you needed to cut your hair, that I was going to let you have it.”
As the conversation moved forward, Boone suggested that Williams simply leave the team as Williams insisted his hairstyle had no impact on his play, The Oklahoman reports.
“What it has to do with is the face of our program,” Boone told Williams. “Listen, if you have a problem with that, Tyler, you don’t have to be here.”
Boone then dismissed Williams from the team.
“You don’t need to be here,” Boone said. “You don’t need to be a part of this team. If you want to go to school here, you can do that, and you can keep your scholarship here. But you don’t need to be on this team.”
Tyler Williams and his parents complained to the university, and the school’s lawyer Tom Mars told KHBS in a statement: “Coach Boone’s attitude about player’s hairstyles is admittedly old-school, but it’s not discriminatory. He’d feel the same way if a young Larry [Bird] was playing for UA-Fort Smith. That said, he’s going to make it abundantly clear to everyone concerned that he recruits players based on their talent and character. Coach Boone also wants to make clear that, despite what he thinks about personal grooming standards for student-athletes, he doesn’t believe (and never has) that a player’s hairstyle, tattoo sleeves, or body piercings are indicative of their character or their potential to become the next Larry [Bird] or LeBron James.”
The university’s chancellor, Terisa Riley, said there is an investigation into the allegations was underway.
“According to the Arkansas-Fort Smith team website, Williams started all 29 games last season and finished second on the team in scoring (12.9 points per game), third in total assists (54) and fourth in total steals (25) while shooting 38 percent from three-point range and being selected to attend the NCAA Student-Athlete Leadership Forum,” The Bleacher Report reported.
Williams currently plays for Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Oklahoma.