Livermore, De La Salle suspend boys basketball game over fight in gym building
Tuesday night’s boys basketball game between host Livermore High and De La Salle was suspended after an off-court fight stopped the game, requiring intervention from school officials and resulting in a call to police.
Livermore athletic director James Petersdorf told the Bay Area News Group that the game was stopped with four minutes remaining and Livermore leading 44-41.
“There was a fight in the hallway involving one of our students and a group of kids from another school that wasn’t De La Salle,” Petersdorf said. “We don’t even know what school they’re from. And it was a big enough fight where the cops had to get called and we had to suspend play.”
Petersdorf said a Livermore student “got beat up pretty bad,” prompting a call to law enforcement and paramedics. The teams plan to restart the game later this week at a site between the schools’ campuses.
The Livermore student is not a student-athlete at the school, Petersdorf said. He was not transported by paramedics and was released to his parents.
De La Salle coach Marcus Schroeder told the Bay Area News Group that players, coaches and fans from De La Salle were all evacuated safely following the incident.
“At a certain point, the gym got cleared and police came and told us that we were all good to go back in the gym,” Schroeder said. “But at that point, the decision from both Livermore and De La Salle was made to suspend play.”
After suspending the game until a later date, the schools moved everyone out of the gym.
Rumors spread online in the aftermath of the incident that one of the people involved in the fight had a gun, and that was the reason the gym was cleared.
Petersdorf said he was in the middle of breaking up the fight and he didn’t see a gun. He added that police reviewed footage of the incident and did not see a weapon.
Livermore police officials did not have information about the incident when contacted Tuesday night.
An eight-second video of the fight reviewed by the Bay Area News Group did not appear to show a gun.
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