HS Coaches Rule- expelling an athlete

deep dive wrote:

Coach sounds like a jerk.

But please. We're preparing children for life after high school. You mean to tell me that she couldn't email the coach, or a captain, that she was going to miss school and practice on Monday? I'm going to take a wild guess that she was on facebook and/or email over the weekend. When she has a job she's going to need to call her boss.

On the flip side, I had a little league teammate skip a game and he drowned. Tragedy is a sad reality in life. Her pregnancy has little to do with the coach not giving her a pass.

I couldn't disagree with you more. This coach had everything to do with this girls pregnancy. Your assumptions and guesses are all 100% incorrect. This was a kid on an Indian reservation who lived in a beat up trailer with no running water and no power. Her alcoholic dad left the scene before she was born. She was basically raised by this grandmom while her mom drank and had babies with other men. So no, she didn't email or chat or facebook. She had no phone. She walked across town and told one of the other girls what had happened and why she'd be gone. The coaches' phone went unanswered when the other girl tried to call him. But the coach knew on Monday anyway. Her grandma's body was stuck in the back of a pickup and driven to a sheep camp in the middle of nowhere where the nearest cell tower is probably a hundred miles away. Running was really this kids life and she was devastated when she was kicked off the team. She was hoping for a scholarship. Sadness turned to anger that turned to rebelliousness. Pregnancy followed. Yeah that's life. Bad choices on her part. But these are high risk kids who are doing well to even participate in sports and not join a gang or drink or smoke meth or whatever. So I'd say your atttack of this kid is BS. This same coach tried his best to have the boys team's best runner kicked off the team by contacting the state athletic association after he'd seen the kid jogging in a diabetes prevention fun run one Saturday, claiming this was a rule violation. For those who claim this is just life, get used to it, that's BS. Real bosses have consequences for their actions. They lose their employees and their businesses underperform and their bosses fire them or the business fails. There are no consequences for a tyrannical high school coach in a sport no one but the athletes and their families care about.

thats totes bs

This coach is right if a football player were to miss practice they wouldn't make the team, we have a policy that if you don't make the first two weeks of practice your not on the team if you miss any time in the first two weeks your suspended for meets for as many days you miss, you miss 3 practices your off the team as simple as that.

I don't think you were making the "educator" comment to me... actually, I'm not in education - have been fairly successful in business; it was kind of fun to coach HS early on because I wasn't in education and wasn't "burdened" by that bureaucracy. And parents definitely treated me differently than other coaches that were also teachers (frankly I got more respect it seemed).

coachie woochie wrote:

The coach is more important to the team than any of the kids individually are. He/She is there to run the program in a way that reflects well on the school. Letting kids do whatever they want doesn't do that. He/she is responsible for every member of the team, preparing them to race, their behavior and saftey at practice and at meets, but the kids are just responsible for themselves. There is no comparison to levels of importance.

I agree, lets try and see the big picture here. Yet you sound like you a spoiled kid who just wants things centered around himself and to be able to do what you want when you want. World doesn't work that way.

Cross Country and Track are individual sports, drop the team scoring and the coach, and very little would change. Imagine Footlocker without the fake regional teams, an improvement actually, and highschool teams are just as much a drag. Without the jerk highschool coaches, kicking off the kids with the right attitude regarding stupid rules and authority, we could start competing with the Africans.

I was going to write something similar -- those that do not lead and inspire their athletes need to more heavily rely on rules that enforce what they cannot induce. Not allowing such rules without strong justification helps uncover coaches that cannot or will not make the effort to coach effectively.

Need to have a policy which is clearly communicated. This was not the case at this Allentown Catholic HS from what I see. Too bad for the kids, I beleive the count is up to 6. College visits banned as are SAT courses. Can't soar with eagles when you fly with turkeys.

The problem is that the school is being run by the AD, Mr. Kopp and the Principal is too intimidated by him and Coach Ackerman, who threatened to resign if the school reinstated the kids. The lesson learned is that the adults are not being honest so why should the kids especially the ones who dont go to practice but do not tell the coach cause why should they, he doesn\'t take attendance so he will never know they were not there. Only those students who did the right thing and reported to the coach that they were out of town but would practice on their own suffered the consequences of the \"Phantom Policy\" which has yet to be seen or signed by parents or team members.

PDong? The original PDong who created so many problems on runinsight?

I'm going to be on you like stink on a monkey.

So, they're off the track team, too? (if there is one)

I can't believe someone said it was a privelage and not a right to be on the cross country team.

If your parents aren't dodging income tax, then you have every right to be on the cross country team. I, the taxpayer, pay you, mr. stupid coach. (assuming you are a non-volunteer coach at a public school).

Do you think that the Men of Oregon have a 3 strike rule? Do you think Lydiard had a 3 strike rule for Snell? Create a winning environment.

You can't coach desire. None of the top coaches have stupid rules. It's generally the high school coaches who don't know running as well that want to convince themselves they're doing some really great coaching.

What a bunch of militaristic bullshit you guys are on here. Left, right, left, right f*** all. Your runners can see right through you, if there's one thing kids can't stand it is the hypocrisy of rules for rules sake.

Our HS X-C team consisted of a bunch of weed slanging, acid eating, borderline alcoholic miscreants who got off terrorizing small town homeowners and shopkeepers when we'd have to go on some retarded 2 and a half hour bus ride up to the Iron Range to dominate some small potatoes sectional race every week. We trained our ass off in the summer and rarely listened to the prescribed workout by the coach except on the occasions when it was supervised. Oh yeah, we had the state champ in the mile and 2 mile our senior year.

The kids do not want to even run for this guy any longer. He is not what anyone would look for in a coach, he is manipulative, self serving, a liar and arrogant. He obviously does not care about being a positve role model. Apparently a few of the kids transferred out to another school and their parents have asked for refunds on the tuition they have paid into their kids mediocre education. I still cannot get past the fact that the school allowed this coach to dictate when a family could take their vacation?

So you think that as long as policies can be conjured up as you go and you can get the AD to agree to your personal means of ridding a team of certain kids, that it is in the best interest of the kids? Well I hope you don't have kids or coach any for that matter.

The missing of practice is not even the main issue, the issue is that after they contacted the coach that they would be missing practice a policy was quoted, one which was not ever communicated to any of the other parents spoken to. And to this day has not been seen or verified. These kids did not miss practice as a show of blatant disrespect they let the coach know they were going away on a family vacation, and/or taking SAT classes and they never got any negative response from him that indicated that there would be consequences.

Having to stay home from a family vacation happens quite a bit in sports like basketball and baseball, so I don't really have a problem with that part, and only that part.

College coaches are not even this harsh, my nephew told me that in order to get kicked off a team in College you have to do something pretty awful, the only awful thing here is the way this coach has treated these kids, especially in their Senior Year. One thing is for sure he will never be regarded as a positive influence in any of their lives. Vacations are for families to spend time together and in one of these cases the family had arranged to meet with their older daughter who had moved far away and they had not seen her in some time so to not allow this reunion for a sibling and parents, how dare they!

The Allentown Catholic school has 6 kids off the team as of last week. The "policy" gets broader and broader every day. No college visits, SAT courses, no absentism period. Also from what I hear there is no coaching, just enforcing of phantom rules. Sounds like the school needs an overhaul.

seems there's alot more coming. incompetence breads insecurity which leads to a poor enviroment for the development of student athletes. We're talking a very large tote.