Soccer player sues coach,claims she was forced off team for refusing to kneel before games

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Former Virginia Tech women’s soccer player Kiersten Hening has filed a federal lawsuit against Hokies women’s soccer coach Chugger Adair, alleging that after she refused to join her teammates kneeling before games this season, the coach engaged in a “campaign of abuse and retaliation” that led her to leave the program.

“Hening’s stance was costly – too costly,” the lawsuit, filed March 3, reads. “Her coach dislikes Hening’s political views. Because she refused to kneel, he benched her, subjected her to repeated verbal abuse, and forced her off the team.”

The university is not named as a defendant in the suit, only Adair.

An athletic department spokesman referred comment to the associate vice president of university relations Mark Owczarski, who was not immediately available.

Hening, a 21-year-old Midlothian native and former star player at James River High School, walked onto the Virginia Tech team in 2018 and started as a freshman and sophomore.

She was in the team’s lineup for its opening match of the 2020 season, against rival Virginia. While her teammates knelt during the pregame reading of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s unity pledge – a show of support for the social justice movement and Black Lives Matter – Hening and one other unidentified player remained standing, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that, during halftime of the Sept. 12 season opener at UVA, “Coach Adair berated Hening for her stance. He singled her out and verbally attacked her, pointing a finger directly in her face. He denounced Hening for ‘bitching and moaning,’ for being selfish and individualistic, and for ‘doing her own thing.’”

According to the lawsuit, Adair targeted Hening instead of the other player who remained standing because that player was on scholarship and her parents had a previous phone conversation with Adair and had “warned him not to retaliate against their daughter for opposing (Black Lives Matter).”

According to the lawsuit, Adair was strongly supportive of the ACC’s equality pledge and even suggested having players wear the names of victims of alleged police misconduct on their jerseys, and that his direct supervisor, senior associate athletic director Reyna Gilbert-Lowery, “is a vocal supporter of (Black Lives Matter.)”

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