SAN MATEO — They were still standing when the band played the first few notes of the national anthem Friday night, huddled at one end of the field after finishing warm-ups.
Then, as they had done a week earlier, the Mission-San Francisco High football players took a knee.
They knelt during the anthem before their game at San Mateo as the protest started last month by 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick continues to spread among athletic teams at all levels.
“I am proud of the boys for thinking this through and taking a stand collectively,” Mission Principal Eric Guthertz said earlier Friday. “I think there are a lot of issues that our young men are facing in our society, particularly young men of color. I think, No. 1, they have their right to exercise their freedom of speech and speech could be taking a knee.
“I actually think taking a knee is a pretty respectful way to speak out without being disruptive or disrespectful. I love the fact that they did this together and had each other’s backs.”
One Mission player who joined the team this week, kicker Duncan Lau, chose to stand while raising an arm during the anthem Friday.
“I stand with my team, with their cause and everything,” said Lau, in tears after his potential game-tying field goal just missed on the game’s final play. “I am 100 percent with them. But my grandfather was a colonel during World War II. He lost a lot of people for this flag. I’ve got to respect that. But I also want to respect my team and their cause.”
For the second consecutive week, Mission’s football team followed the hometown quarterback’s lead, which has put a spotlight on Kaepernick and beyond. Television crews descended on Mission’s campus during school hours Friday and at the San Mateo field Friday night.
The players from the diverse urban school — 50 percent Latino, 15 percent African American, 10 percent Chinese, nine percent Caucasian, according to Guthertz — knelt during the anthem Saturday at Redwood High in Marin County and stated their intention to do so again Friday.
Guthertz said he is not sure how long the protest will continue, adding that it is the players’ call.
“I support them in whichever way they decide to go,” he said.
Mission athletic director Arnold Zelaya is on board, too, noting the bond he has with the player who initiated the idea, senior Niamey Harris.
“Niamey and I are really close,” Zelaya said. “He plays basketball for me. He’s a very special kid. I knew how he felt about things. But when I saw the entire team do it, that’s what I was most proud of. That was amazing to me, the team thing.”
Charles Chase of San Francisco, whose son, Willie, plays on Mission’s junior varsity team, said he was shocked when he saw the entire team kneel last week.
“I thought you’d see three or four people, not the whole team,” he said. “I liked the unity of it.”
Since Kaepernick planted the protest seed by sitting during the anthem before an exhibition game last month at Levi’s Stadium and taking a knee during the anthem of subsequent games — citing a “country that oppresses Black people and people of color” for his actions — athletes of various races and levels have joined him.
Thursday, women’s soccer player Megan Rapinoe knelt during the anthem while wearing a Team USA uniform, marking the second time this month that she has protested during the anthem — but the first with the national team.
“I truly feel like I am representing my country by doing this, in representing everyone that lives in this country, not just the people who look like me,” Rapinoe told ESPN.
The anthem protests have funneled down to high schools across the country as reports of football players taking a knee during the song on the East Coast and the South have surfaced. But as the Associated Press reported this week, some players have faced consequences, including suspension and harassment.
One private school administrator threatened game and team suspensions if coaches or players protested the anthem.
“We are not public institutions and free speech in all of its demonstrations, including protests, is not a guaranteed right,” Mary Boyle, superintendent of the Catholic Schools Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, wrote in a letter a diocese spokesman called precautionary, according to the Associated Press.
The football players at Mission — described on the school’s website as the “oldest comprehensive public school in San Francisco” — don’t have to worry about disciplinary action for their emulations of the 49ers’ quarterback.
“We’re a school that is focused on anti-racist teaching and social justice, and we have been that way for many years now,” Guthertz said, noting a book about the school that was published last year, “Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph.”
“This is a school that is very engaged in both the Black Lives Matter movement and other issues of social justice,” Guthertz added. “It’s been something that has been a part of the fabric of Mission High School for many, many, many years — this notion of social justice and equity.”
Guthertz is in his 16th year at the school that sits across the street from Dolores Park in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District and ninth year as principal. He said he loves the school so much that he has a Mission bear tattooed on his arm.
“I am not only the principal, but I am also a proud parent,” he said. “I have a child here, a junior and an athlete herself. If she took a knee, I’d be proud.”
