Coach suspended for winning 92-4

Sure, except this has less to do with protecting the feelings of the losing team than it does about cleaning your own house.

Other peoples feelings are out of your control. Your own behavior, however, is very much under your control. A good coach should be communicating this kind of life lesson to his athletes. This is much more valuable than slaughtering a team that is clearly non-competitive. Why would you kick somebody that is already down? What could it possibly do for you? Make you a better athlete? I doubt it, the other team isn't providing you much of a chance to hone your competitive edge.

I also ran D1. I was #3 freshman in the NCAA at my event, top 10 in my recruiting class coming out of high school. I was pretty good. Funnily enough, I never felt it made me a better athlete or competitor to completely blow the doors off of someone from the art academy across the city in a pre-season meet.

Since when does sportsmanship not count? Of course the opposing team will survive. As you say, it's not so big of a deal in the cosmic scheme.

But whether or not the losing coach should face consequences of his own is a separate issue. If I am the administrator, there's not much I can do for the losing team, other than say "hey, sorry, that was bit a sh!tty thing to do." What I CAN do, however, is make sure my own house is clean, by telling my coach, "hey d!ckhead, have a bit of class next time". He got suspended for A GAME, not a season. A slap on the wrist.

We can complain about this "liberal" attitude ruining sports, but I'd argue that blaming other people for problems is a pretty spineless position to take... What happened to personal responsibility? As conservatives WE should be upholding the values of community. Character has value.

season greetings wrote:

From what I can tell they weren’t taunting the other team. Didn’t break any rules.

Can I ask you what you think of a coach who just let's their first string dominate over an extremely weak opponent for 3 quarters (they scored no points at all)? What team goal is achieved? To make them overconfident? It isn't for fear of losing.

Seems like a perfect opportunity to allow other members of the team to get some on the court experience. Also perhaps a good opportunity to try some alternate ideas. Perhaps they did the later but they did not do the former until 4th at 80-0.

I personally think it lacks some class as well but that is another kettle of fish (and seemingly one others agreed with because they were suspended over this game).

pointless wrote:

season greetings wrote:

From what I can tell they weren’t taunting the other team. Didn’t break any rules.

Can I ask you what you think of a coach who just let's their first string dominate over an extremely weak opponent for 3 quarters (they scored no points at all)? What team goal is achieved? To make them overconfident? It isn't for fear of losing.

Seems like a perfect opportunity to allow other members of the team to get some on the court experience. Also perhaps a good opportunity to try some alternate ideas. Perhaps they did the later but they did not do the former until 4th at 80-0.

I personally think it lacks some class as well but that is another kettle of fish (and seemingly one others agreed with because they were suspended over this game).

I assumed the coach played all his girls. Inexcusable for keeping in the starters.

This happened to a friend of mine who coached at a failing school in NYC. He barely had girls on his roster and went against a perennial powerhouse. The coach of the powerhouse ran up the score and was pressing the inbounder after every basket. He wanted one particular girl to pad her stats to get a scholarship. My friend called a timeout and told his girls to just give her the ball.

After 3 consecutive times giving her the ball and her scoring the referee admonished my friend and questioned why he would do this. He told the ref that he should be asking the other coach why he was pressing and keeping the star player in the game. Finally the other coached put in his subs.

The coach was suspended one game by his own school. Sister O'Neill, school president, expressed remorse for how that outcome happened, and made a simple, clear statement that it clearly did not reflect the values of the school. Not that complicated, pretty simple.

There are so many things you can do to run the clock out in the second half. Lots of passing. Walk the ball up the court. Don’t fast break. Sure as fuc$ don’t full court press on defense. Starters on the bench. That’s outrageous.

You can still maintain high levels of effort and intensity and competitiveness but change tactics to not run up the score like that.

Lake Trout wrote:

Does it honestly make the losing team feel any better if the winning team starts playing with their hands tied behind their backs? The losing team still recognizes how bad they are and how bad they are losing. I honestly don't see an issue unless the winning team was trash talking and actually playing dirty.

Classy. Really classy.

And some of us wonder why this current generation of young people are self-absorbed. Let’s teach these kids to score as many as you can against a significantly weaker opponent.

DanM wrote:

Why did the coach of the losers keep the team on the floor for an entire game ? Throw in the towel at halftime and go home.

Exactly. If you think you don't have a chance, and don't want to play on, quit.

Take No Prisoners wrote:

Lake Trout wrote:

Does it honestly make the losing team feel any better if the winning team starts playing with their hands tied behind their backs? The losing team still recognizes how bad they are and how bad they are losing. I honestly don't see an issue unless the winning team was trash talking and actually playing dirty.

Classy. Really classy.

And some of us wonder why this current generation of young people are self-absorbed. Let’s teach these kids to score as many as you can against a significantly weaker opponent.

The game isn't over, until it's over. Have seen similar things in baseball where a high school team is up 15 after playing base to base exclusively and then reliever after reliever can't throw a strike and the team ends up coming back to win. Probably wished they had taken those extra bases on past balls, pressed for stolen bases, and ran out extra base hits!

The classy move would be for the weaker team to quit after half time and apologize for wasting everyone's time.

Toughen up. In highschool I once lapped a guy for a meet record out of spite due to girl drama and he was cool about it.

I've also been lapped twice in a 10k it's a competition for a reason

Not the same. You can get lapped and set a personal best or even a national record.

DanM wrote:

Why did the coach of the losers keep the team on the floor for an entire game ? Throw in the towel at halftime and go home.

-- In many cases the high school sports governing body has rules concerning keeping the team on the floor or throwing in the towel. The governing body in which I coached had a harsh consequence for doing so in any sport. On a side note there used to be "mercy rules" in several sports, I believe when my son played basketball one of the mercy rules was that the clock continued to run through foul shots, timeouts, etc. There was also an unofficial expectation that the starters stayed on the bench and there was a five pass offense in the front court.

DanM wrote:

Why did the coach of the losers keep the team on the floor for an entire game ? Throw in the towel at halftime and go home.

We don't quit, we ask the other team to quit? Actually, I don't agree with running the score up or quitting. I believe in trying to make the second half more fun for everyone.

I think in these situations sportsmanship requires basically two things: 1) Play the game as safely as possible, i.e., err on the side of being less physical, as there's just no point in putting anyone at risk when the outcome isn't in doubt. 2) Do not taunt or laugh at your opponents. Beyond that, kids aren't idiots. The losing team knows how badly they're outmatched, and they're not going to feel better because the winning team went easy on them. In fact, easing up too much can also feel disrespectful. People always talk about running up the score as inherently bad sportsmanship, but I think what people are really concerned about is how it makes the winning team look. It reminds me of that great line from Chariots of Fire: “You yearn for victory just as I do, but achieved with the apparent effortlessness of gods. Yours are the archaic values of the prep school playground. You deceive no one but yourselves.”

I get where this comes from! The program was supposed to close at the end of last year so the players, the coach, everybody must be mad and feeling let down by people who wanted to close a program this good! Now they came with vengeance to let everybody know they are here to stay!

Thank you by the way by not making this a racial issue! I think they wanted their voices to be heard unfortunately this got out of hand!

I saw the breakdown of the scoring by quarters was:

1st: 29-0

2nd: 27-0

3rd: 24-0

4th: 12-4

So the winning coach prob took his foot off the gas in the late 3rd Q. Sounds like this was a missed opportunity IMO by the winning coach to build team chemistry by starting an entire new starting lineup and let players 6-12 play the whole game and still win 68-15. This would allow the winning team to have an entire team buy into the team etc. the winning team only won their next game by 3 points so they are not crazy dominate

Strikes me that the winning coach deserves a slap on the wrist for failing his own team. Fact is, this guy is working with teenagers - he’s supposed to be teaching some life lessons along with basketball. At least in my experience, pushing hard when you’ve already won by miles ends badly. You end up looking like a jerk, and people don’t want to deal with you in the future. I know learning how to help others save face or edge out gracefully has really helped me in both my personal & professional relationships. Wish I’d learned this skill sooner. He’d have served his own team far better if he’d guided them in ways to maintain a win without needlessly showing anybody up. Had they been pros, my reaction would be different.

what about the other coach? wrote:

If I'm on the losing side, I'd feel more humiliated if the other team started intentionally easing up. I'd rather just take my licks and move on than have the other team - what - just pass the ball around and not shoot? Inbound the ball to us? Miss shots on purpose?

You are talking from a player's perspective.

You have to think about the fragile ego of the special snowflake coach of the losing team.

For those pansies, the high school sports are all about them, and not about the student athletes.

You are confusing two different Sacred Hearts. Sacred Heart High School in Waterbury, CT did close at the end of the 2020-21 school year. This is Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden, CT, part of the Southern Connecticut Conference (SCC).

49ersFan wrote:

I saw the breakdown of the scoring by quarters was:

1st: 29-0

2nd: 27-0

3rd: 24-0

4th: 12-4

So the winning coach prob took his foot off the gas in the late 3rd Q. Sounds like this was a missed opportunity IMO by the winning coach to build team chemistry by starting an entire new starting lineup and let players 6-12 play the whole game and still win 68-15. This would allow the winning team to have an entire team buy into the team etc. the winning team only won their next game by 3 points so they are not crazy dominate

After the first quarter the outcome was not in doubt. After the first quarter: starters on the bench, no press defense, no fast breaks, walk the ball up the court, run set plays with plenty of passing. You might score every time, which is good and fine, but you score fewer times. It’s obvious that the other team were total scrubs.