Young man who has been the target of horrible racism gets a message from his favorite player.

I have to be honest, although this story has a happy ending, this is one of the saddest things I have had to cover in a while.

A young old boy named Ty Cornett loves nothing more than to play hockey and at 13 years of age he is at a period in his life where everyone around him should be encouraging to pursue his drams. Ty however has been the target of some absolutely vicious racism during his young life and I am ashamed to say that plenty of it appears to have come from fellow or rival hockey players who simply do not approve of him playing the game that he loves.

To hear his father describe some of the comments that have been directed by his son, both by kids which I suppose can be somewhat more understandable and by adults which is completely inexcusable, is nothing short of heartbreaking.

“This year’s been the worst by far,” said Ty's father Matthew in a recent talk with The Athletic. “… They would beat their chests and start acting like gorillas every time he lined up in front of their bench. They followed him to the bench in front of his coaches and said, ‘Hey monkey, stick to basketball.’

‘Thank God the ice is frozen. Otherwise you’d be drowning right now,’ was another one that he heard. Then he played in another tournament and a dad 10 seats from me said, ‘Get the fuck up, monkey. This ain’t football.’

“He played a team here and was called ‘Dirty (N-word), ‘I’m going to lynch you, (N-word),’ ‘My dad says the only good (N-word) is a dead (N-word), ‘Go pick me some cotton.’ He got called ‘boy.’

Of course no one should ever be subject to this kind of abuse, especially not a child, and even though hockey is a fiercely competitive sport the comments described her by Matthew Cornett certainly cross all boundaries of decency. Thankfully hockey players at the highest level of the game often tend to be pretty good dudes and that happens to be the case for Ty's favorite player P.K. Subban.

Well Subban heard about what was going on with Ty and in a beautiful move he made a short video for the young man, encouraging him to never give up on his dreams. You can see that video below.

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