US

‘Senseless, Irrational, Cowardice Bulls***’: High School Track Coach Fired After Refusing Athletic Department’s Student Athlete Mask Mandate Speaks Out

(Fox News/Screenshot)

Melanie Wilcox Contributor
Font Size:

A New Hampshire high school track and field coach who was fired for refusing to enforce the athletic department’s mask mandate for his student athletes spoke out Friday on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Bradley Keyes, the now-former track and field coach at Pembroke Academy in New Hampshire, wrote in an email to school’s athletic director, Fred Vezina, saying the mask mandate is “senseless, irrational, cowardice bullshit.” (RELATED: High School Baseball Players Suspended For Maskless Photos On School Property)

WATCH:

“I could play the ‘someone might get hurt’ card,” Keyes wrote in the email. “I could ask what about the kids with asthma? I could point out that kids in the 400m and 800m sometimes end up throwing up at the end of a hard race. I could mention that occasionally they come close to, or even pass out. I could warn that wearing masks while exerting themselves to the limit of their physical capabilities could be dangerous.”

“But those excuses are the same ones used for these insane rules in the first place – someone might be hurt, someone might be sick – no matter how small the actual chance of it happening is,” he continued.

Keyes told host Tucker Carlson that he tried running a 200 meter and a 400 meter on the track while wearing a mask so he would have first-hand experience.

“I knew it would be bad,” Keyes told Carlson. “I’ve run the races before, but I didn’t quite realize that as you inhale over and over again – hard – you’re actually sucking the mask into your mouth and your nose. It seals around your face, so there’s no airflow around the edges which is how it’s designed. Everything has to come through the fabric, and it takes extremely exhausting races and makes them significantly worse, and then I got to thinking about what’s happening with any particles that are coming off the mask, what are you actually breathing into your lungs over and over and over again and I got more concerned about the possible health effects.”

Keyes said after objecting to implement the school policy he was fired, and that the headmaster and his former bosses have been silent.

Keyes also said he would like whoever implemented this policy to explain the rationale behind it.