Tensions between two area schools, East High and Charles Finney, persist following an alleged racially charged incident at a girl's varsity soccer game last October - an incident that the Finney principal says never happened.

Larry Neal, coach at East High, says that one of his players, an African-American female, was the target of sexist and racial slurs made by several white male Finney soccer players who were watching the game from the northwest corner of the field. Neal, who didn't hear the alleged taunting, says that the girl was so upset she could barely finish the game.

"We have been playing teams all over the county for the past nine seasons and nothing like this has ever happened to us before," Neal says. "It was also the first time this girl had come face to face with racism."

The girl, a sophomore at Monroe, called her mother from the Finney field.

"My daughter calls me crying, she was so hurt," says Cynthia Rochet. "It was a shock."

A fellow East High player, Jaytaya Duncan, says that she heard the boys, too.

"I was standing right there," she says. "They used the n-word, and it was more than once."

Duncan says that she told a referee what was happening because taunting of any kind is prohibited by state regulations.

"We were told to ignore it and just play the game," Duncan says. "How do youignore something like that?"

What angers Duncan the most, she says, is that adults stood by and did nothing.

"There were parents standing right there who didn't speak up," she says. "There were even three African-American boys on Finney's soccer team who didn't say anything."

No one spoke up in defense of the East player because nothing happened, says Kristin Spuck, Finney's high school principal.

Spuck, who was at the game, says that she was sitting in the same general area as the boys and that she didn't hear them say anything. There was some competitive tension between the two teams that may have been aggravated because East was losing, she says.But Finney students did not use racial slurs against anyone, Spuck says.

"We are one of the most racially diverse schools in the county," Spuck says, and she's "absolutely convinced" that the allegations are false.

Neal contacted officials at Finney immediately after the game. And Finney took the matter seriously and conducted an extensive investigation into the charges, Spuck says.

"We talked to parents, students, and teachers who were there and there is no evidence to support what they're saying," she says.

East's team members invited Finney students to meet over pizza, says Neal, in order to ease tensions between the teams. But a colleague told Spuck that East actually wanted to provide diversity training at the gathering, Spuck says, so the invitation was declined. Finney does diversity training as part of its curriculum, she says.

Rochet, the girl's mother, is disappointed by Finney's decision not to meet with the East High team.

"We say we never know why people get into fights at these sporting events," she says. "That's because no one wants to talk about what happened."

Officials at both schools expressed concerns about media coverage of the alleged incident.

"We feel it is getting into a he said-she said situation," Spuck says.