A high school girls basketball team in Nebraska was assessed a technical foul for wearing pink uniforms during a game on Monday night in honor of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, with a goal of auctioning their jerseys to raise $2,000 for the charity.
According to published reports, everything was going well for the team from Burke High until the third quarter, when the coach of the opposing team talked to referees about the team’s pink uniforms.
State rules state that when a team is playing on their home court, they are required to wear white uniforms, according to Omaha World-Herald. The officials, apparently sticking to the rule book, whistled a technical foul, which led to two foul shots for Columbus.
Burke High was leading by one point at the half, but ended up falling to the Columbus Discoverers 62-47.
The publication reported that Columbus Athletic Director John Krogstand told the head coach about the uniforms.
“I asked one of our assistants whether Burke had said anything ahead of time about wearing pink uniforms,” Krogstrand said, according to Omaha World-Herald. “It was my suggestion to coach Licari to bring it to the attention of the officials.”
Some members of the basketball team were trying to make sense of why they were assessed a technical foul when they were just trying to help out the community and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
One player on the team told KPTM-TV: “We were just supporting a charity and I think that it was dumb that we had to get a technical foul for it.”
Burke High Athletic Director, Kyle Rohrig, took responsibility for the technical foul that stunned the team at the beginning of the second half.
“It was a total mistake by me,” Rohrig said. “We had good intentions, but we made a mistake, and then there were consequences.”
Columbus Superintendent Troy Loeffelholz told KPTM that if the school reached out to them before the game about their intentions to wear pink uniforms for charity then everything would’ve been okay.
“In fact we may have helped them reach the goal, the fun part is getting the visiting school to help,” he said.
Despite, the technical foul, the team ended up raising $2,600, more than their original goal.
