Iowan radio announcers fired for racist comments about Latino players at basketball game

FOREST CITY - Two KIOW Radio employees have been fired for making racist comments during a Forest City-Eagle Grove boys basketball game in north-central Iowa last week.

A week ago today, the two announcers can be heard commenting about three players on the Eagle Grove basketball team, seemingly mocking their Latino surnames.

The basketball game was being broadcast on the internet, and that portion of the video was posted on Facebook, where it's had 238,000 views as of Monday evening.

The radio station did not identify the two announcers, but longtime KIOW sports announcer Orin Harris no longer appears on the station's staff page.

Forest City school officials identified the other announcer as Holly Jan Kusserow-Smidt, a district employee they said has been placed on administrative leave.

Dylan Albertson of Forest City, a sophomore at the University of Northern Iowa, confirmed Harris was the station's announcer at the game.

Albertson has helped stream the school's sporting events via The Cube, an online streaming service for high school sports. The station, he said, calls in to let broadcasters know when they are on the air, and the stream is muted when they are off-air.

Harris and Kusserow-Smidt can be heard making racial remarks throughout the video, including at the end when Harris said, 'As Trump would say, go back where they came from.”

'Well, some would say that, yea,” Kusserow-Smidt responded. 'Some days I feel like that, too.”

Harris, reached at his Forest City home Monday, declined to comment.

In a statement, Karl Wooldridge, KIOW's station manager, said the comments never aired on KIOW, and the station condemned the actions of the two announcers.

'These comments were deplorable, and the staff and management of KIOW in no way condones or supports these comments,” the statement reads.

The Forest City school district said in a statement that Kusserow-Smidt was not 'functioning in an official capacity for the district” during the basketball game.

Superintendent Darwin Lehmann said in the statement he 'disapproved” of Kusserow-Smidt's comments and that 'the communication ... is inconsistent with the policies and values of Forest City Schools. We expect all staff to hold the same values that we teach in our education system every day.”

The superintendent said the matter is being reviewed with legal staff and that he could not comment further on personnel matters.

Jess Toliver, superintendent of the Eagle Grove district, told the Globe-Gazette the situation is 'odd” since students were directly named in the broadcast.

'These kids have been here for a while,” Toliver said. 'They've been in sports for a while.”

He added that the Forest City school district and KIOW have both apologized to Eagle Grove.