Instead, two amateur soccer teams – Bosnia and Lyons F.C. – are locked in a spirited match under the industrial glow of the gym lights. Shouts in Spanish and Bosnian rattle the bleachers as a Lyons player, decked out in a grey Arsenal jersey, gets free on the sideline and sets up for a shot.

At the last second, one of Bosnia’s defenders intervenes and blocks the attempt with his shin, sending the ball careening off course. An exasperated shout of “mierda!” is sent up to the rafters.

The referee overseeing the match is approached by the Lyons forward, perhaps hoping for a favorable call.

With his whistle clenched tightly in the side of his mouth, the ref doesn’t budge.

“He blocked you,” the ref says, not interested in any argument. “You shot it. He blocked you. That’s why I didn’t call it.”

This referee is Jeton Hyseni, the man responsible for the action in the gym this afternoon. He has managed and officiated this international soccer league since 2011, earning the respect of all who compete. He says anywhere from 7 to 8 languages are spoken by the players.

Play resumed, Jeton returns to prowl the sidelines. It’s hard to miss him in his neon yellow Adidas jersey, scorecard and pen by his side. The match, scoreless in the first half, quickly turns into a rout. Lyons takes advantage of Bosnia’s weak net and scores a lopsided 8-1 victory.

Jeton mingles with the players after the match. He says this was the first of five games he’ll referee today, and 10 games total will take place under his watch before the weekend is out.

It’s easy to see why Jeton has such a strong work ethic. For starters, he was forced to grow up quickly due to the Kosovo War.

Throughout the 1990’s, tensions bubbled between ethnic Albanians and ethnic Serbs in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

The Kosovo Liberation Army was formed in 1996 and carried out sporadic attacks on Serbian political figures for two years before Serbian police and Yugoslav forces made an attempt to re-establish control over the region.

The use of force made swaths of refugees flee Kosovo. The conflict caught the eye of the international community, and after diplomatic negotiations broke down in 1999, NATO forces began air striking Serbian targets. In response, Serbia and Yugoslav forces drove out and displaced Kosovo’s Albanian population.

Jeton was at the ground floor of the conflict. A Kosovar, he spent the summer of 1999 in a North Macedonian refugee camp, which is where the sixteen-year old got his first job: distributing food to others fleeing the terror.

“That was my first job and I haven’t stopped working yet,” he says.

The Hysenis, five in all, did not know where they were going to end up when given the chance to move to the States. The International Center of Kentucky resettled the family, provided them the necessary documents and picked them up from the Nashville airport that July.

He recalls being surprised on the drive up from Music City – he thought Bowling Green would have more tall buildings and didn’t expect to see the little rural towns that dot the landscape.

Because he was the oldest child, Jeton’s father, Aziz, gave him a mission when the family started adjusting to their new life. He was to care for his brother, Driton, and sister, Jehona.

“These are your kids now, not mine,” he remembers Aziz telling him. He made good on his responsibility to lead the family, getting a driver’s license in a matter of months and graduating from Bowling Green High School in four years.

“That’s my little town where I grew up,” Jeton says, sharing photos of Uglari, Kosovo, a little village tucked into the Balkan foothills. Small townhouses with red roofs dot the sloping greenery.

He recalls, long before the war, playing soccer on the river that cuts through town.

“When it gets cold it gets frozen, you could even drive a car on top of it,” he says.

Jeton flies home to visit when he can, his most recent trip coming in 2017. He has been wanting to go back since 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic and Aziz’s declining health put a wrench in the travel itinerary.

“I hope I get to go visit this summer because six years is a very long time,” he says.

While homesickness might persist, Jeton has no plans to move away from Bowling Green. He’s become too entwined with its people.

When he isn’t refereeing the international league, Jeton works as a custodian at the Warren County Area Technical College.

The building’s cleaning supplies storage area doubles as his office, the place where Jeton plans out the league’s schedule and calculates the current standings when he isn’t needed elsewhere.

“I watched all the World Cup in here,” he says, pointing to the computer monitor sitting on his personal desk. His soccer fandom revolves around Real Madrid and star forward Cristiano Ronaldo.

Jeton played as a forward, too, in his youth.

“I was a goal-scoring machine,” he says, reminiscing on his athletic feats.

The concrete room, filled with the low hum of the building’s HVAC system, affords Jeton peace and quiet. He has a little bit of those precious commodities right now – at least until August, he says.

“In August, I start the high school season, and that’s even more drama than my adult league,” he says.

Running the international league, as demanding as it can be, still has yet to burn Jeton out. The steady carousel of new players and coaches keeps things interesting year after year.

“You’re not dealing with the same people over and over,” he says. “But even if you are dealing with the same people over and over it’s kind of good because you get the hang of how they want stuff to be done, how you communicate with them.”

He compares it to a machine – “if you work one machine for 20 years, it might get boring after some years.”

Most of his work at the ATC is done in the summertime, stripping and waxing the classroom floors when the kids are away. He had no idea how the process was done when he arrived, but “now I can do it in maybe 10 days.”

That said, he doesn’t want to work too quickly, because then there will be nothing left to do.

“If I get it done all in one week, what am I going to do for five weeks or six?”

When he arrived at the ATC almost four years ago, Jeton didn’t think he’d stay for very long. He’s glad he stuck around.

“I never felt any job that considered me a part of the family,” he says. “We here have a group text and any thing that happens to somebody or their family, they’re so good at helping someone out. This place makes me feel like I’m part of the family.”

When Aziz passed away last February, his ATC coworkers gave him a card and time off. Some of the carpentry students worked to create a memorial plaque as a gift.

“Just saying you are sorry, that means a lot,” he says.

Jeton’s household is full of life and sound.

A Premier League match between Manchester City and Crystal Palace fills the television, the Sky Blues winning 1-0. Jeton’s son Landrit watches YouTube videos on his blue plastic kids tablet, the sound from the speakers echoing off the home’s white cinder block walls.

A small pennant of Albania’s flag, one of Jeton’s spoken languages, hangs on the key rack just inside the door. Just above sits an ornate copy of the Quran. The floors are covered in intricate rugs that have seen decades of use.

“This is Liona, she’s three years old – this is Landrit, he’s five years old,” the proud father says.

Jeton and his wife, Blerina, sit on the couch in matching Real Madrid kits with little Liona between them, who rocks back and forth.

“That’s pretty much what they do, stay on the laptop or iPads,” Jeton says with a hint of playful exasperation.

The couple first met in 2013 through Facebook, with Jeton flying back to Kosovo to visit.

They were engaged a few years later and Blerina arrived in the U.S. on a fiancé visa in 2015, which gave them three months to wed.

The couple are both Muslim, but Jeton says he hasn’t been able to actively live out his faith as much as he would like due to his schedule. He is proud of the

fact that he’s only missed two Rama- dans since moving to the U.S., going so far as to referee a full slate of games with no water one year.

“He just shed a couple of pounds,” Blerina says.

Jeton is usually able to relax a bit on the weekends, but not this time. He is tired. His mother, Magule, is not doing well.

“My mom is in hospital, she’s been in hospital since Thursday night,” he says. “I spent freakin’ nine hours just to get her in the ER, and by the time they took her to her room I went home. I had to get up in the morning to go to work.”

Her father’s stress doesn’t bother Liona, who is all giggles. Jeton finally cracks a smile and blows a raspberry on her stomach, eliciting a joyful shriek.

“She’s happy right now, but she might change,” Blerina says, smiling at her daughter.

Landrit is now in the kitchen with his tablet, but the volume is still high enough to compete with the television.

“He never likes to play the normal sound, he will speed it up,” Jeton says. Blerina takes a look over her shoulder back at her son. “Most of the time it will be slow motion and it drives people crazy.”

The family has called the house, nestled north of downtown Bowling Green, home for about 12 years now.

“I’m in the process of trying to buy a (new) house, but my income isn’t all that great,” Jeton says.

Blerina says the cinder block walls remind her of how homes are constructed back in Kosovo. Drywall structures seem flimsy in comparison.

“I thought at least all houses were similar, when I went to work the material was like paper or something,” she says. “Oh my god, are you trying to make a shed?”

The two weren’t used to violent storms, especially ones that could shred houses apart. The strongest storms they’d seen in Kosovo would just yank off a few terracotta tiles.

It’s no wonder Bowling Green’s tornadoes of December 2021 left a mark on Blerina.

“From that night, every time I hear the alarm, I swear to god it’s like a shadow. It’s scary,” Blerina says. “In our country, we don’t have tornadoes. The wind is scary enough.”

Jeton admits that he slept through the whole thing. Blerina still can’t believe it.

“When we buy a house the first thing I’m going to build is a shelter, I swear,” she says.

Liona has disappeared around the corner to the kitchen, but returns clutching a bag of gummy bears to show to her mother. Blerina says both kids likely have non-verbal autism, so she has gotten good at reading what they need.

“Since I am here all the time I can understand almost everything that they want. They are pretty independent, you know? What they want to eat, they’re going to show you,” she says. “There is no problem in daily life except in conversation, of course we want to hear them talking to us.”

She says both kids started speaking when they were eight months old, words like “mom” and “dad.” All of a sudden, right around 13 months, they stopped.

“Landrit talks, but not what you ask him, more like gibberish or whatever he listens to on his tablet,” Jeton says. “He doesn’t follow directions as much, but he’s getting better (than) where he was.”

To the dismay of the parents, neither of the children have shown any interest in soccer thus far. The pair want their kids to know all there is to know about their ethnic culture – including soccer – but right now, Jeton says there are more important things to work on.

“Right now I just want them to be able to talk,” he says.

The kids are working with speech and occupational therapists and are both in preschool at Parker-Bennett-Curry Elementary.

“That’s been very helpful,” Jeton says.

He hopes that one day he can see both his kids enroll at WKU. Blerina says the kids both love school, so much so that there are days when Liona doesn’t want to come home.

“She’s like him,” Blerina says, gesturing to her husband. “The same temper, the same everything.”

Jeton just smiles. He may be busy, but he’s giving his kids something he didn’t have – the chance to grow up at their own pace.

“That’s why I stay busy pretty much all year long, to make up a living,” he says. “I hope I can provide for them until they’re older than 16 like my dad did.”

Jake Moore can be reached at charles.moore275@topper.wku.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Charles_ JMoore.

Western Kentucky University has been found in violation of Kentucky’s Open Records Act after redacting information from Shaquille O’Neal’s “DJ Diesel” performance contract obtained by the Herald in a public records request.

According to an open records decision delivered by Attorney General Daniel Cameron on Wednesday, WKU failed to cite an exception to the Open Records Act and “explain how it applied to the record withheld.”

The Herald had requested access to all contracts between WKU and “any and all agencies” representing Shaquille O’Neal, also known as “DJ Diesel,” who performed on campus on Oct. 21. According to the received records,WKU paid $130,000 to Mine O Mine Holdings Inc,a company owned by O’Neal, for the performance.

The publication also received O’Neal’s personal appearance contract for the event, but the “hospitality rider” section of the contract was fully redacted. 

Following Cameron’s decision, the Herald filed another request for the contract and received a copy that did not redact the hospitality rider. The contract can be read in full here, with the hospitality rider located on page 16.

According to the rider some of the items the purchaser, who is identified as WKU, had to agree to provide include: two bottles of Don Julio 1942 tequila, four bottles of Grey Goose vodka, two bottles of Moet & Chandon Imperial Brut Champagne, 24 cans of either Corona or Pacifico, 12 cans of sugar free Red Bull, six cans each of coconut water, yellow gatorade and sprite, 48 bottles of Fiji water – half cold, half room temperature – a presidential suite hotel room, seven king hotel rooms, a “meal buyout” of $400 and four fresh Papa John’s pizzas “waiting in the dressing room.”

When the redacted contract was first received, the Herald was told by Lindsey Carter, assistant general counsel, that the information is “considered proprietary and is redacted pursuant to KRS 61.878(1)(c).” The Herald filed an open records appeal to Cameron’s office on Nov. 8.

Cameron’s decision states that, under KRS 61.880(1), an agency’s explanation of why a record was withheld must “provide particular and detailed information.”

“Because the University merely stated that the information was ‘considered proprietary’ without explanation, the University violated the Act,” the decision reads.

WKU’s response to the Herald’s appeal stated that the information contained in the redacted hospitality rider relates to “artist preference for specific products, transportation and accommodation which contain actual or anticipated business relationships,” and “upon information and belief” is generally recognized as confidential in the entertainment industry.

Cameron’s decision states that this “information and belief” is based on representation given to WKU by Wasserman Music/Mine o’Mine Holdings, the organizations behind O’Neal’s contract. According to the decision, in order to “sustain its denial under KRS 61.878(1)(c)1,” WKU must first prove the hospitality rider was “confidentially disclosed to it.”

“The University merely states the private entity requested it to redact the Hospitality Rider after receiving notification of the Appellant’s request,” the decision states. “This, without more, is insufficient to show that the information was ‘confidentially disclosed’ to the University.”

Cameron’s decision goes on to list items generally recognized as confidential, such as “private financial affairs,” “trade secrets, investment strategies, economic status, or business structures” and “the method for determining (a) contract price.” The decision notes that the common factor among these items is the “insight they provide into the internal operations of the entity making the disclosure to the public agency.”

According to the decision, WKU must show that disclosure of the hospitality rider would “permit an unfair commercial advantage to competitors of the entity that disclosed it.” The decision states that the university “has not even alleged this to be the case.”

“A ‘bare statement that [a private entity has] asked the [agency] to treat … records as confidential’ is insufficient to sustain a denial under KRS 61.878(1)(c)1,” the decision states. “Accordingly, the University has failed to meet its burden of proof that the Hospitality Rider is exempt from disclosure. Thus, the University violated the Act when it redacted the Hospitality Rider from the contract.”

Co-Editor-in-Chief Jake Moore can be reached at charles.moore275@topper.wku.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Charles_JMoore.

“I came all the way from Jackson, Mississippi to be here, to be a part of this,” Sterling said.

Sterling, along with a group of protestors, came to Bowling Green Saturday to demand justice for Till, who was lynched in 1955. 

The protest came about after it was discovered that Carolyn Bryant Donham, Till’s accuser, was living in Bowling Green. According to the Daily Mail, Donham, now 88, is in hospice care.

Donham re-entered the public eye this year after an unserved warrant for her connection to Till’s death, dated to 1955, was discovered in a Mississippi courthouse basement, according to CBS.

“We still want Carolyn Bryant brought to justice,” Sterling said. “We want a trial […] the law should be applied to her too.”

Donham, working in a store in Money, Mississippi in 1955, accused then 14-year-old Till of wolf-whistling at her during his trip to the store. Till, a Black child, was visiting from Chicago.

Days later, Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and half-brother, J.W. Milam abducted Till at gunpoint before beating him, gouging one of his eyes out, shooting him in the head and depositing his corpse in the Tallahatchie River where it was discovered soon after.

“Even if he did whistle at a white woman, that’s not a reason to lynch a 14-year-old child,” Mmoja Ajabu, a member of the Veterans Association of African Descendants group, said.

Bryant and Milam were arrested and charged for the lynching, but both men were acquitted by an all-white and all-male jury. The pair later admitted to killing Till in an interview and both men have since passed away.

“We are here in the court of public opinion – we’re also going to have a presence in the court of legal opinion,” Ajuba said. “This week we plan to file a suit in federal court in Mississippi that says if the warrant on Carolyn Bryant is not served, the justice system should not serve anyone because that would be a violation of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution that guarantees equal protection under the law.”

Bowling Green Police sent out an alert Saturday morning regarding a shooting threat the department had received. According to the alert, the threat was directed at groups who intended on protesting in front of the Justice Center and at Donham’s Shive Lane apartment.

Following this, multiple events were called off including the Kentucky Museum’s “Christmas in KY,” the Mistletoe Market at SOKY Marketplace and the annual Christmas parade. 

“You got the alerts just like we got the alerts. ‘People who came down to the justice center would be shot,” Ajuba said. “We appreciate the police. But the responsibility of our safety is ours. So yes, we’re armed; not because we came here to shoot nobody, not because we came here to hurt anybody, but we do understand – as a Vietnam veteran – when there is a threat you’ve got to neutralize the threat.”

Ajuba said the group came to let the people of Bowling Green know that the city is “harboring” Donham.

“Not that you invited her, not that you’ve got the legal authority to go and arrest her, but you should know that you are harboring a woman that took part in the lynching of a 14-year-old child just because he supposedly whistled at a white woman,” Ajuba said.

Protestors then moved on to Donham’s residence.

Co-Editor-in-Chief Jake Moore can be reached at charles.moore275@topper.wku.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Charles_JMoore.

According to records obtained by the Herald, WKU paid the amount to Mine O Mine Holdings Inc, a company owned by O’Neal.

“The concert was paid for as a partnership between Athletics and Enrollment and Student Experience,” Jace Lux, university spokesperson, said via email. “Several years ago, both groups set aside funds to host a celebratory event once campus operations returned to normal.”

In addition to the payment to O’Neal, the performance contract states that the “PURCHASER”, noted as WKU, was to provide DJ, monitor and special effects equipment “at no cost to the ARTIST.” Some of the items required included three Pioneer DJ CDJ-2000NXS2 CD players and two confetti cannons.

The performance contract states that the the purchaser was to provide “all required hotel room accommodations at a five (5) star luxury ARTIST approved hotel.”

The contract states that O’Neal’s stage had to have clearance of at least 96 inches, because “Shaquille is very tall!!”

The hospitality section of O’Neal’s personal appearance contract has been fully redacted. The Herald reached out to Lindsey Carter, assistant general counsel who provided the records, regarding the redacted page.

Carter wrote via email that the information is “considered proprietary and is redacted pursuant to KRS 61.878(1)(c).”

KRS 61.878(1)(c) states that records “generally recognized as confidential or proprietary, which if openly disclosed would permit an unfair commercial advantage to competitors of the entity that disclosed the records,” are exempt from open records requests.

The full agreement can be read here.

O’Neal has moonlighted as a DJ since 2015, playing the festival circuit and starting his own “Shaq’s Fun House” festival. O’Neal appeared on South Lawn after an hour delay and treated attendees to dance remixes of classic rock songs and modern hits.

Co-Editor-in-Chief Jake Moore can be reached at charles.moore275@topper.wku.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Charles_JMoore.

These students are hard at work in WKU’s newly dedicated Disaster Science Operations Center, another place on campus where students from a multitude of disciplines can take advantage of hands-on experience and applied research.

The DSOC, dedicated Friday morning, is situated inside WKU’s Environmental Science & Technology Building. Projectors, screens and computers are sprinkled across three main rooms to assist students in developing weather forecasts and relaying information to the public.

Joshua Durkee, professor and university meteorologist, alongside David Oliver, WKU’s director of environmental health and safety, serve as DSOC’s faculty and staff directors.

“[Oliver] and I met in 2013, we started to learn together that weather is one of the biggest disruptors,” Durkee said. “As him and I have worked together over the years, we’ve been reshaping the way we plan for and respond to any type of weather or incident that can happen to campus.”

The center is a collaboration between White Squirrel Weather, WKU’s meteorology program, WKU’s Department of Environmental Health & Safety, WKU Public Broadcasting and WKU Athletics. DSOC brings students and staff from meteorology, emergency management and Homeland Security Sciences together to improve disaster mitigation and responses.

“DSOC is the only one of its kind at WKU, in that it is rooted in multiple graduate and undergraduate programs in Ogden while it also serves, trains and credentials students across colleges at WKU,” Caboni said.

David Brown, dean of the Ogden College of Science & Engineering, echoed the president’s sentiment.

“It’s not just isolated to one program in one building,” Brown said. “There are possibilities to interface with agriculture, to interface with engineering, business, health and human services, education, communications.”

Co-Editor-in-Chief Jake Moore can be reached at charles.moore275@topper.wku.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Charles_JMoore.