BENNETT'S MINUTES: Coaching woes, and who runs the ship?

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Actions of parents, school boards getting disturbing

Coaching in high school sports has changed a lot over the years, and while many good things have happened there are some disturbing trends that threaten the desire of many people to take the reins of a team.

For a long time, coaching positions were highly sought-after due to extremely low salaries and were a way to give even a little boost to the paycheck.

As time has gone by, teachers are still not getting rich but their income has risen dramatically over time. (We all know that teacher who started in the 1960s and made $4,000 a year.)

Coaching is now much different, and the days of people having careers spanning multiple decades are probably coming to an end.

Lay coaches (non-teachers) have become more and more necessary, particularly in harder-to-get sports such as tennis, golf, soccer and swimming.

The people who do it should be applauded for their efforts, regardless of the season’s outcome. While the pay is better than it used to be, the time demands make what money they get sometimes seem not worth it.

Nothing has done more harm to the future of the coaching profession than a recent string of incidents involving parents and school boards either firing or attempting to remove coaches based upon parent complaints.

Are any of these complaints on the level of recent collegiate scandals at Michigan State and Penn State, in which actual physical harm came to student-athletes?

No. Not even close.

If any of them are proven to be at that level, then the coaches should go straight to prison. Nothing of the kind is being alleged, however.

Are these coaches of losing teams whose parents are tired of not winning? Not really.

Here are some examples:

• Carmel won 87 of 107 girls’ basketball games coached by Tod Windlan over the past four seasons, and had this year’s Miss Basketball

Windlan was fired last month after parents and other people associated with the program raised “concerns” over how things were run. Among the school’s recommendations for the future is to have open practices for parents and any other interested stakeholders to be able to watch.

• Center Grove football coach Eric Moore is under investigation by the school for alleged verbal abuse.

The Trojans are 179-62 in 19 years under Moore’s leadership.

• Social media created something out of nothing at Danville last month, when someone posted that a meeting was going to be held to discuss boys’ basketball coach Brian Barber’s future with the program.

Indianapolis radio host Dan Dakich picked up the story and ran with it, and the next day both Barber and the school released statements dismissing the false Internet report.

The Warriors have won 336 game under Barber in 19 seasons, and anyone who knows Barber and has seen his teams play knows he does things the correct way.

• Perhaps the most egregious miscarriage of justice is taking place at Monroe Central, where girls’ basketball coach Leigh Ann Barga’s fate will be decided at a school board meeting this week.

Barga led her team to a 25-1 record this season and is 66-11 over the past three years.

Two school board members are related to players on the team, and the unofficial belief is that a lack of playing time for those players has led to this discussion taking place.

So who’s running the show?

Clearly, if abuse of any kind is actually taking place it must be investigated, no matter how many games that coach has won or lost.

Physical abuse is worse than verbal abuse, but verbal abuse is still bad and cannot be discounted. Claims of “it makes a man/woman out of you” don’t cut it with me.

But as far as we know to date, none of these situations — or several others that have taken place recently — is at that level.

Most, if not all involve vindictive parents or overinvolved school board members who should have a lot more important things to worry about.

Our society today seems to have developed a notion that everything is going to be fair, and if it’s not then people should try to fire someone they feel is being unfair to their kid.

Some people run for school boards not wanting to improve the quality of education in their community, but to exact revenge on a coach for not playing the right kid.

I know of one school board member in a nearby county who made it a personal mission to fire a coach because his daughter had been cut from a cheerleading squad by that person’s wife. And he succeeded.

Sadly, I’m sure there are many more examples of such idiocy.

I know of another coach in a nearby county who took a boys’ basketball position a few years ago on the condition that one of his rules could be that parents are allowed to call him one time during the season, and not a second time.

He was granted that ability by administration, and never had any parental problems. And was also very successful — probably no coincidence.

So what can we do?

The Indiana High School Athletic Association cannot try to step in and solve such issues at more than 400 of its member high schools.

And, schools and school boards cannot stop parents from being delusional about the abilities and expectations of their own kids. That’s an unfortunate reality of the sports world.

But schools and school boards can use much better judgment than they do in whether to pursue baseless allegations that are just fronts for getting vengeance.

Finding coaches is hard enough.

Bits and pieces

• Cloverdale’s Jalen Moore is still searching for a college basketball home, but will be making a Division I visit soon.

He will be traveling to San Antonio this month to visit the University of the Incarnate Word.

• South Putnam senior-to-be Allen Plunkett has received a scholarship offer from Urbana University, a Division II school in Ohio.

• Cloverdale’s Sammie Shrum is listed on the Class of 2020 Top 100 Watchlist by the Indiana Girls Basketball Recruiting Report.

• DePauw has gotten a commitment from one of the Wabash Valley’s top basketball players, as Sullivan’s Ty Drake will be a Tiger next year.

Drake, a 6-2 guard, averaged 16 points, three assists and 2.9 rebounds per game this year for the Golden Arrows.