A California high school basketball team was stripped of its division championship by the state athletics’ governing board after an incident where players from the team threw tortillas at opposing players from a largely Latino school.

The Associated Press reports that the California Interscholastic Federation announced Coronado High School will lose its boys Division 4-A regional championship because of the “degrading and demeaning behavior.”  Following a June 19th 60-57 victory over Orange Glen High School of Escondido, players from Coronado were filmed throwing tortillas in the air toward the players on the Orange Glen bench.

The Coronado Unified School Board voted unanimously to fire coach JD Laaperi, and the superintendent of the school district issued an immediate apology for the incident.

The players got the tortillas from an alumnus of Coronado High School who reportedly played basketball when at the school.  Luke Serna said that teams at his college, the University of California, Santa Barbara throw tortillas after wins as a means of celebration and there was “absolutely no racial intent behind that action.”  Serna claims he is half-Mexican.

In fact, UCSB banned tortilla tosses after it became a tradition in the early 1990s, the school’s website says.  In the 1990s, fans would toss tortillas on the basketball court after the team scored its first point, not after a game.  Currently, the tradition is only carried on at soccer games by persistent traditionalists, and throwing a tortilla at a basketball game can earn a student disciplinary action.