Duke volleyball player Rachel Richardson praises BYU AD for his actions after racial slur incident involving Cougars fan

Duke volleyball player Rachel Richardson recounted how a series of racial slurs during a match last week at BYU turned into a national news story and reflected on how it's changed her life in an interview with ESPN's Holly Rowe that aired Tuesday.

Richardson posted a statement to Twitter on Sunday, two days after fans yelled racial slurs at her while she was serving. «No athlete, regardless of their race should ever be subject to such hostile conditions,» she wrote at the time. BYU banned a fan from all athletic venues on campus Saturday, a day after the match, and said the athletic department has a «zero-tolerance approach to this behavior.»

The fan was not a student but was sitting in the student section.

Richardson told Rowe that the incidents started in the second set when she was serving. She said she's used to crowds trying to intimidate opposing players, but it was different that night.

«I heard a very strong, negative racial slur,» Richardson said. "… So I served the ball, got through the play. And then the next time I went back to serve, I heard it extremely clear again, but that was the end of the game."

She said she told her coaches about the incident between games, and the teams switched ends of the floor. She said she saw her coaches talking with BYU officials, who she thought acted on the incident. «We were told someone was speaking to the student section and I was all right, so, and that was the end of it,» Richardson said. «And we played our third set on the opposite side of the net from them.»

In the fourth set, she said the «atmosphere of the student section had changed.» Richardson called the slurs and heckling from the crowd «more extreme, more intense.» She said the man who was eventually banned from