Footage captures LM, Manvel postgame fight

LA MARQUE — The Daily News obtained a video of the fight that occurred Jan. 13 at the La Marque High School gym after a basketball game with Manvel.

It is not known who shot the video or whether it had been edited. The video begins after the fight had begun. There are many people running in the video and some screaming. There is footage of someone in Manvel’s red shorts and sweatshirt fighting back against someone dressed in black.

At one point, someone close to the camera said, “They punched the coach!”

The fight broke out after the game was over, and most of the players were off the court, said Mike Bass, athletic director for Alvin Independent School District. Manvel is part of the Alvin district.

The fight occurred while the officer was out of the building waiting for the Manvel buses. The La Marque basketball players had gone to their locker room.
Bass was not at the game, but he said coach Greg Devers described the scene as a melee. Bass said Devers thought about 15 people attacked him and knocked over a couple of parents from Manvel.

“Coach Devers went to go help one of the mothers up, and as he’s helping one of the mothers up, he gets popped pretty good in the left side of his face,” Bass said in January.

La Marque school district police Chief Timothy Fields said 15 students did not attack Devers and his team.

Fields said he has viewed a video of the fight and has tried to “identify all the persons who were involved in this melee so we can be fair and equitable.”

The school district identified six La Marque High School students involved in the fight and sent them to the district’s Discipline Alternative Education Program.

The time students will spend in the alternative program is discretionary and will be about 45 to 75 days depending on the severity of the offense, school district spokeswoman Margaret Simon said.

“One student allegedly pushed a parent of a basketball player and that basically started the whole melee,” Fields said.

Another student allegedly hit the coach, he said.

Fields said his department has worked with the Alvin school district police department, and he met with players and coaches from Manvel. Fields said he was meeting with the district attorney Thursday to hand over the results of the school district’s investigation.

La Marque Superintendent Ecomet Burley has said the school district will follow through with whatever the student code of conduct and the applicable law call for.

Devers is still coaching and has the same vigor and drive before the fight, Bass said.

No Manvel students have been disciplined because of the fight, Bass said.

“We feel that our kids were assaulted and attacked,” Bass said. “They had to take care of themselves or it would have been worse.”