Buffalo, New York's Kenmore East High School is the epicenter of controversy Tuesday, where 11 members of their girls basketball team have been suspended for beginning their games with a pregame chant that incorporated the N-word.

“They huddled up in a circle and go ‘1-2-3,’ and say, [the N-word, spelled out,]” Tyra Batts, a 15-year-old sophomore who’s the only African-American player on the squad this season, told WIVB-TV in Buffalo. “It makes me feel sick to my stomach, and weird and awkward that I was in the locker room with them when they said it.”

Batts detailed the exchanges with her teammates over the chant to The Buffalo News.