Additional reporting by Kalpana Gopalkrishnan

As they exited one by one, the members of the football team blocked the harsh fluorescent light of the F building classroom from reaching the dancers in the rally court below. Team members were not celebrating or cheering as they left the room; instead they walked under the hallway lights as if in a lineup. Their absence seemed to have gone unnoticed for the most part, but now, as the lights began to shine on their white and purple jerseys, their peers began to take note of the players’ exit. By the time the last of the team had filed out of their talk with the dean of students Nico Flores, and Flores had closed the door behind them, the big question of the night still remained. What happened?

According to Flores, his address to the football team was due to a general increase in inappropriate activity by students wearing MVHS uniforms. Throughout the night, Flores noticed inappropriate dancing during his routine patrols through the center crowd of the dance. On one of his patrols, he noticed a football player freak dancing with an unnamed freshman girl and saying a potentially inappropriate statement.

“At that point I wanted to make sure I addressed with the football players that it’s important to recognize that they have their jerseys on,” Flores said. “That they’re easily recognizable, [and]  that they’re leaders on the campus whether they want to be or not.”

The situation itself occurred when the football player in question, junior David Truong, began to freak at the dance. Also referred to as grinding, freaking is described as a dance when a female dancer is in close quarters in front of a male and both are rubbing their bodies against each other. Truong initially stated that he did not intend to freak at the dance that night, yet he agreed to dance later on.

“In the moment, I wasn’t planning on freaking at all,” Truong said. “Some people were like ‘Hey you should totally dance with her,’ and I was like ‘Nah I’m good.’”

Multiple sources confirmed that Truong had only been dancing for a few seconds when he was pulled out by Flores for making an inappropriate statement mid-dance.

Flores immediately pulled Truong out of the dance, and organized for the rest of the football team to be pulled out of the dance and addressed. Through his address, he hoped to remind the players of their role on campus.

“As an athlete on this campus, you kind of hold another leadership role,” Flores said. “I wanted to make sure that that was very clear and that this type of behavior shouldn’t be coming from our football team or anyone else.”

This isn’t the first time Flores has had to address an athletic team because of the dance. According to Flores, three or four years ago, the football team was involved in a similar situation at the Welcome Back Dance. After addressing them, Flores noted that there were no more problems until this year’s dance.

This year’s new varsity football coach Adam Herald also agrees with the stance Flores holds on the football team’s conduct. Although he was unable to prevent the situation, he feels that he now knows what is necessary to maintain his team’s role model status at MVHS.

“If you’re going to be wearing a jersey and representing the program, then you’ve got to be smarter and make better decisions,” Herald said. “If you’re representing this program that’s one thing. And obviously if you’re acting silly that’s another thing. But to be doing both that’s where the issue comes for me.”

Although Truong understands that he was not following the rules set by the administration or by the football program, he does feel there is a definite issue between the general stigma associated with the Welcome Back Dance, freaking and the standards that the administration expect.

In the future, Herald and Flores hope to prevent a situation like this with more communication with their athletes in advance. Even when Truong was addressed by Flores, Flores maintained that Truong didn’t shy away from taking full responsibility for his actions.

“He was very respectful; he was very receptive to our conversation,” Flores said. “I will say that he was very cooperative, and he did everything that I would expect a Monta Vista student to do when he knew that he was in the wrong. I listened to his side of the story and that’s why it was a conversation and nothing more.”