‘Hate won’t live here’: Duke volleyball returns home to support, and with a message

Hitting the Cameron Indoor Stadium volleyball court represented moving forward, doing what they love doing best, for Duke’s volleyball team Friday.

“It’s been,” Duke coach Jolene Nagel said, “quite a week for this group.”

It didn’t mean the hurt the Blue Devils experienced a week earlier, two time zones away in Provo, Utah, when sophomore Rachel Richardson said she heard racial slurs being yelled at her during a game at Brigham Young was forgotten forever.

No, that’s not what Duke wants to take from that experience.

“Focusing on the positive that can come from the situation, although it was really terrible,” Duke freshman Christina Barrow, who along with Richardson is one of four Black players on the team, told The News & Observer this week. “We really just want change to happen. Because, like Rachel mentioned before, we don’t want to put BYU down. We don’t want to put anyone down. We’re trying to lift them up and raise awareness to this whole thing.”

The awareness effort was on display prior to Duke’s 3-1 win over East Tennessee State and throughout the match.

A pregame moment of silence was observed just as it was last season at Duke’s home games. The program instituted it, as part of the ACC’s unity initiative, to support the Black Lives Matter movement following George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officers in 2020.

Duke’s players and coaches locked arms and kneeled in unison.

The team wore specially designed Duke blue T-shirts with “Hate won’t live here” in white letters on the front with a Duke logo during pre-game warmups. Nagel and her staff wore the shirts throughout the match.

“We wanted to make a shirt that we’re going to sell, hopefully in the end,” Duke senior and co-captain Gracie Johnson said. “Hate won’t live here. That’s kind of what we want this team to be known as.”

It’s Duke’s way to make something good out of what’s been a trying experience.

The racist incident Richardson reported occurred on Aug. 26 during a 3-1 loss at BYU before a raucous crowd of 5,507 at Smith Fieldhouse in Provo, Utah.

In a statement last Sunday and in interviews with ESPN and ABC on Tuesday, Richardson said she heard racial slurs yelled at her while she served at the end of the court in front of the BYU student section.

Though it hasn’t found any evidence or confirmed anyone used any racial slurs, BYU banned a person, who it said was not a BYU student, from its athletic venues in response.

While Richardson was not made available for interviews on Friday, Barrow said she didn’t hear any slurs at BYU but she described in detail what Richardson shared with the team at the time.

“Rachel was the first one who told all of us,” said Barrow, a reserve who didn’t see any game action at BYU. “And even at first, when she first heard it, she was kind of confused like that, ‘Did I just hear that?’ And then when she heard it a second, third, continuous times, she was like, ‘Oh, I’m definitely hearing that.’ And that’s when we made our coaches aware of everything.”

Game officials were notified as well as BYU’s coaching staff. A campus police officer was placed near the Duke bench.

When the game was over, Duke pointed out the person who used the slurs while also saying people in the student section also threatened them.

Hate won’t live here

Later that night, at their hotel, the Blue Devils met and began emotionally processing the situation through tears and anger.

“We had to just kind of get the tears and the emotions out of the way,” Barrow said. “Then immediately the next step was we’re never stepping at BYU again.”

Duke’s game with Rider the next day was moved to a high school gym off BYU’s campus.

The Blue Devils won and then made the long journey home on Sunday. Athletics director Nina King met with them upon their return to campus from the airport and the players said they knew they were heard and had plenty of support.

It continued throughout the week as the school’s support for the team went far beyond the athletic department’s various efforts.

With Monday being the first day of classes for the fall semester, Barrow said students and faculty were quick to offer good thoughts without going too far.

“It was kind of like, ‘Are you OK? Let me check in’ and then it was done,” Barrow said. “And so I didn’t feel intruded by the student body at all. The first day of classes went extremely well for me and I think for my other teammates as well.”

Duke’s basketball coaching staff, including head coach Jon Scheyer and retired head coach Mike Krzyzewski, and several players also attended Friday’s match. Duke president Vince Price was on hand, as was King and members of her senior staff.

Numerous athletes from Duke’s other teams were in the stands as well, along with women’s basketball coach Kara Lawson.

At Friday night’s football game with Temple, Duke’s players wore a sticker on their helmets with the initials “HWLH” (hate won’t live here) on them.

A couple of ETSU staff members wore T-shirts saying “Block out racism” and “Be the change” during the match with Duke.

“It’s been a lot,” Nagel said, but we’re really grateful for the support that we’ve received from, I mean, our student-athlete community, our athletic department, the university. We’ve just been really given some great support. So we’re grateful for that.”