Duxbury High School should dismiss its football coach after anti-Semitic play calls

Dave Maimaron is 159-43 at Duxbury and has won five Super Bowls in six appearances.Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff

Update, 2:47 p.m. Wednesday: Duxbury football head coach Dave Maimaron fired after team’s use of anti-Semitic terms revealed

It’s past time for Duxbury High School to dismiss football coach Dave Maimaron. High school kids have been immature and foolish for hundreds of years, but the notion that a play-calling system that uses anti-Semitic terminology has been tolerated by a veteran coach at a local high school is unacceptable.

Listening to in-game audibles is part of the fun of watching pro football on television. Peyton Manning became famous for hollering “Omaha!” when he changed the play at the line of scrimmage. Jared Goff called out, “Elvis!,” “Tupac!,” and “Ric Flair!” to alert his teammates of a change of plans. The Steelers tried “dilly dilly!” a couple of years ago.

Now close your eyes and try to imagine lining up opposite the Duxbury team and hearing one of the team leaders yell, “Auschwitz!”

This is what happened when Duxbury played Plymouth North March 12. Plymouth’s athletic director reached out to the Duxbury superintendent. Maimaron was not present for the next game, last Friday’s 37-0 rout of Silver Lake. He issued an apology, taking responsibility for “inappropriate language used in the game on March 12.”

Not good enough.

Sorry, coach. You are a leader of impressionable young people. You knew this was going on and did nothing to stop it. You apologized only when players from the other side complained and it was brought to the attention of your bosses. This is more than embarrassing. It disqualifies you from staying on that job.

The Dragons’ audible system initially was meant to be used only in practices. The word “rabbi” was used to indicate “right side.” An R-word for “right.” Get it? Then other Jewish-related terms were substituted, including “dreidel” and “Auschwitz” — a concentration camp in Poland where more than one million Jews were murdered in World War II.

“I want to extend my apology for the insensitive, crass, and inappropriate language used in the game on March 12,” Maimaron said in a Monday statement to the Globe. “The use of this language was careless, unnecessary and most importantly hurtful on its face — inexcusable … We have taken responsibility for the incident.”

Dave Maimaron has coached the Dragons since 2005.Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff

Maimaron has been Duxbury’s head football coach since 2005. He is 159-43 lifetime and has won five Super Bowls in six appearances. Some of the games he lost weren’t even real losses. More than once, he has tanked Duxbury’s traditional Thanksgiving game to rest players for the postseason. In 2016, Duxbury’s 11-0 team tanked the Marshfield game, 53-0, then won the state championship nine days later, beating Shrewsbury, 40-7, at Gillette Stadium.

It’s the kind of success that keeps a guy on the job for a lot of years.

No more. This is not “cancel culture.” This is not about being “woke.” This is about right and wrong and the responsibility a coach has to student-athletes.

Maimaron admits he knew about Duxbury’s offensive audible system, but he didn’t stop it until opponents complained. This means you don’t get to teach and coach the town’s students anymore.