Fire Me If You Must

I commend you taking a stand. A stand that actually requires a huge sacrifice on your part, unlike woke celebrities who benefit from their posturing.

Stay strong. Thank you for being willing to be a casualty in the leftist’s war on common sense.

Resist the totalitarian leftist thugs.

You’ll be missed.

Thanks !

They haven't fired me yet :)

I'll be back here to give an update once I hear the reaction.

So far I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from parents and athletes who are going to provide their own feedback to the school.

I use to be an administrator in a large public school district in the HR/legal realm. Do you have tenure? Did you try to work any back channels before going public on this? Are other sports playing without masks at your schools?

I probably would’ve toned down some of the language. You’ll stick around if you are a teacher with tenure and parents rally to your side. You’re definitely pissing off some people at the district office right now but good for you having a back bone.

Prediction: Although you mean well, you will regret posting this.

Look up risk vs reward.

Thank you for taking a stand in the name of sanity.

Not a teacher, just a coach. Frankly they deserve to be pissed off - they don't seem to care about pissing off the parents and athletes.

I understand risk and reward and have thought it through. I expect that they will fire me - perhaps I'll get a pleasant surprise. If they do fire me I will go off and start a real track and field club. I have shots, discs, javelins, hurdles, a pole vault pit, pole. I'm already looking at land. I'll coach without the bureaucracy.

It might not be exactly the same but I'll be able to look at myself in the mirror.

You sound like a great coach.

Thanks. I absolutely love it.

The kids have a lot of fun and do well. The team has been growing and getting better.

We'll see how it goes.

Good luck to you, sounds like you don't belong in that position anyway.

So I did get fired today. Here's my response....

I Have Been Fired - A Farewell Message

I have been fired.

I am not surprised.

I made my choice to speak out. They made theirs.

My only regret is not being able to be there everyday to teach and encourage all of my athletes.

I have just one parting thought that came to me yesterday that helped clarify this situation and why I made the choice I did.

High school sports in their ideal should:

* instill a joy of physical activity

* show the value of hard work and a long-term view towards self improvement

* teach teamwork and cooperation

* help learn how to face both success and failure with dignity and grace

One of the fundamental parts of all of this is learning to play by the rules. The rules supposedly put in place in order to create a fair and level playing field, to let everyone know what is expected and allowed, and then to let the best man, woman, or team win.

Except now we are adding arbitrary, senseless, ill-thought rules.

I have had a few coaches thank me for speaking out - for saying what they would like to say. Some have even stated that they will be telling their athletes that there’s nothing that can be done if their masks happened to fall down or off at the start of the race. That is how many coaches are going to deal with these new mask rules - they are going to tell their athletes to ignore them, to cheat.

We now have some coaches telling athletes to play by some rules and ignore others.

Then we'll have other coaches who tell their athletes that the new mask rules suck but they’ll still need to play by those rules.

So now you’ve got an un-level playing field and blatant violation of rules.

And that leads to the real crime in this situation - an undermining one of the cornerstones of high school sports and the lessons we hope to teach these young adults.

I won’t be a part of that.

Sincerely,

Bradley Keyes

Former Head Coach of Pembroke Academy Track & Field

sorry to hear you got fired.

masks on young athletes us senseless. pro sports with constant long contact such as the peloton dont require it.

Masks while competing in a track meet is a useless/stupid idea.

But you did this just for attention, not like you actually wanted to keep your job. There were thousands of better ways to handle this than a self-victimizing open letter.

Could've approached it with the kids like: "sometimes you are required to do things that make no sense, that are annoying, that seem unfair - that's life - let's follow the guidelines but keep working to get them changed."

As a fellow coach I commend you for efforts Bradley Keyes. I would even encourage you to take it a step further and get this in the public media.

These requirements are senseless and as has been proven make no difference. Why else would there be other middle schools, high schools, college and pro athletes competing all over without masks? Because it is useless and dangerous to do in an aerobic activity. .

Your kids will forever respect you and you have taught them something much more valuable then running PR's. Your school admin has no spine, they don't deserve you anyway.

Other opportunities in the sport will arise. Stay true. Hang in there.

Hi Bradley...

Commend you for your stance wrote:

As a fellow coach I commend you for efforts Bradley Keyes. I would even encourage you to take it a step further and get this in the public media.

These requirements are senseless and as has been proven make no difference. Why else would there be other middle schools, high schools, college and pro athletes competing all over without masks? Because it is useless and dangerous to do in an aerobic activity. .

Your kids will forever respect you and you have taught them something much more valuable then running PR's. Your school admin has no spine, they don't deserve you anyway.

Other opportunities in the sport will arise. Stay true. Hang in there.

Not Bradley Keyes....

The lexical and stylistic overlap is just highly coincidental :)

Commend you for your stance wrote:

Not Bradley Keyes....

First and only feeding of the troll - 2600 bro.

I am working to get it changed, in the way I choose to do it. I'm not the victim and have not claimed to be. I've chosen my path and will accept the consequences. It is the athletes that are the victims.

And I have no need to prop myself up with anonymous accounts. I think my letters have made it clear that I'm not afraid to publicly state my opinion with my real name and reputation tied to those opinions. How about you ?