Bradley Keyes, a New Hampshire High School track and field coach, claims that he was fired for not enforcing the school’s mask mandate while athletes trained on an outdoor track - a mandate he called “senseless, irrational, cowardice bullsh*t.”
“I will not stand up in front of the kids and lie to them and tell them that these masks are doing anything worthwhile out in an open field with wind blowing and the sun shining,” Keyes wrote in a letter to the school’s athletic director, according to local CBS affiliate WBZ.
Keyes concluded his letter writing “fire me if you must.”
In a blog he posted on Monday, Keyes revealed that he had, in fact, been fired.
“I have been fired. I am not surprised. I made my choice to speak out. They made theirs,” he wrote.
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“One of the fundamental parts of all of this is learning to play by the rules,” he continued. “The rules supposedly put in place in order to create a fair and level playing field, to let everyone know what is expected and allowed, and then to let the best man, woman, or team win. Except now we are adding arbitrary, senseless, ill-thought rules.”
One of the school’s track athletes, David Testerman, explained the reasoning behind Keyes' opposition to the outdoor mask mandate.
“It gets you really tired especially when it gets up to 80 degrees soon and it’s going to be really hard for us to keep doing what we live to do,” Testerman said.
Despite CDC guidelines that continue to call for people to wear masks in medium to large gatherings even after vaccination, critics of mask mandates during exercise argue that social distanced physical activity is vastly more effective than wearing masks, which hinder exercise, as Testerman explained.
“These insane policies are robbing kids of once in a lifetime opportunities for no valid reason other than irrational fears and going along with the sheep,” wrote Keyes.