BLACKSBURG, Va. – A settlement has been reached after a former Virginia Tech soccer player sued her coach, claiming he forced her off the team for not kneeling before a game.
Court records show that the case was settled on Jan. 3, but did not go into any further detail.
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Kiersten Hening filed a federal lawsuit against Charles “Chugger” Adair on March 3, 2022, claiming that, “because she refused to kneel, he benched her, subjected her to repeated verbal abuse, and forced her off the team.”
[ORIGINAL STORY: Former Virginia Tech soccer player sues coach, saying he forced her off team for not kneeling before a game]
The lawsuit claims that Adair’s actions, as an actor of Virginia, violated Hening’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Hening, a junior at Virginia Tech, was a starter on defense during her freshman and sophomore years.
While Adair supported proposals by the university to have athletes wear Black Lives Matter masks, wristbands and armbands, Henning quietly dissented, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states, “while Hening supports social justice and believes that black lives matter, she does not support the BLM organization. She disagrees with its tactics and core tenets of its mission statement, including defunding the police and eliminating the nuclear family.”