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Catholic Central: We Did Not Call Cass Tech Footballers "Ghetto Warriors"

DETROIT (WWJ) - Detroit Catholic Central High School says it has no connection to an insult-filled letter aimed at Cass Tech High School's football team. Cass Tech beat the Shamrocks for the Division One state crown on Saturday.

The letter questions the eligibility of Cass Tech's players and says in five years they will be "failures," either "unemployed, in jail, addicted to drugs or worse."

Catholic Central principal, Father John Huber said the letter is signed by a "Jack Baughman," and though the letter writer claims to have attended the game, there's no one by that name with ties to the school.

"We are disgusted by the cruel content of that nasty letter. It violates everything that Catholic Central stands for. And the people that were most upset were our students, who came to us first thing this morning and showed [the letter] to us and were very, very upset that people would even insuinate that [the letter] could come from anybody associated with C.C.," said Huber.

"It just doesn't make any sense because it violates everything that we stand for. It violates the gospel, it violates everything we're trying to teach our kids every single day and it's just the nasty, cruel tone of it, just is totally out of line and totally uncalled for," Huber continued.

Detroit Public Schools called the letter "trash" and said it's "not worthy of a response."

The following is the text of the letter, which was allegedly sent to Cass Tech's football coach Thomas Wilcher:

Dear Mr. Wilcher,

I had the misfortune of attending Saturday's game. As I watched, I wondered how many of your players would be academically eligible if they attended a real school rather than a DPS holding tank. While graduation rates may be high, a recent study concluded only 4.4% of DPS public school graduates are academically prepared to advance to higher education.

Questions abound: Do your players regularly attend class? Are they, even by DPS standards, eligible? As one looks at the declining enrollment freshman-senior, it is clear that DPS is a failure and in five years your players will be unemployed, in jail, addicted to drugs or worse. In a word — failures. So while Cass celebrates today, the future is bleak and you and everyone associated with DPS is an utter failure, hence, we have Detroit — a city about to be handed over to a financial manager.

The ghetto warriors had their Saturday but, in life, they are losers.

Jack Baughman

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