Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

A Miami brawl between Jewish and Catholic high school athletes may have been fueled by antisemitic language

Witnesses to a fight involving Scheck Hillel Community School said the Catholic students had yelled antisemitic phrases

(JTA) – A high school championship soccer game between a Miami Jewish day school and a local Catholic school ended with an ugly on-field brawl and at least one injury, along with reports of the Catholic students possibly having uttered antisemitic slurs.

Videos from the incident circulated online, elicited competing accounts about what happened and the extent to which antisemitism played a role.

The fight Wednesday night was between Scheck Hillel Community School students and those at Archbishop Coleman Carroll High School. Scheck Hillel parents told local news outlets that students at Archbishop Coleman Carroll had used antisemitic slurs, including “Hitler was right.”

In a joint statement released to parents Thursday, Scheck Hillel and the Archdiocese of Miami acknowledged there had been “a physical altercation” between the two schools following the game, which Scheck Hillel lost. The statement also said, “It is concerning that students from Archbishop Coleman Carroll may have made antisemitic comments or gestures at the outset of the incident, although both schools are still completing their initial investigation.”

Spectators rushed the field following the initial comments, getting into an altercation with players, and a spectator was injured and received medical attention, the statement said. The schools also alerted the Florida High School Athletic Association.

The schools’ official account differs somewhat from one posted online by Jewish Breaking News, a popular Instagram page with more than 120,000 followers. A video the page shared showed part of the fight, accompanied by unverified claims that the Catholic students had kicked a Jewish student with their cleats, leading to hospitalization, while also attacking a Scheck Hillel administrator.

Another witness told the Miami Herald that a Jewish student suffered a concussion, but the statement from the schools only confirmed one spectator injury. 

Scheck Hillel’s initial post about the game to social media made no mention of the fight. Instead, the school congratulated its players “on an amazing 2023 soccer season.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.