Fired for doing your job
In what is truly a sign of the times, a coach has been fired because he did not apologize for his team beating another team 100-0. And, amazingly, the press article yammers on incessantly about the losers and how it was so bad and shameful that the other mean ol’ team just kept winning.
Idiots.
So, to Micah Grimes and his team: congratulations on your victory. Seriously, someone needs to tell this guy and his team that, you know, effort pays off.
Update: From comments:
Nobody made the other team stay. They could have forfeit after the 1st half. They chose to stay and play; that shows character and perspective. Punishing the coach for winning 100-0 is an insult to the losing team.
Indeed.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Nobody made the other team stay. They could have forfeit after the 1st half. They chose to stay and play; that shows character and perspective. Punishing the coach for winning 100-0 is an insult to the losing team.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I agree with Dusty – by firing the coach, they management says that playing the entire game was “bad”. Which – by extension – tells the losers that continuing to play was “bad”.
Stupid admins….
January 27th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I’m sorry, but while the coach shouldn’t have been fired, he should have been taken out back and whupped.
These are kids, for cryin’ out loud. “Coaches” who, for whatever reason, think they are in the major leagues for little people, piss me off to no end.
The purpose of childrens sports programs isn’t to win as much as it’s to teach teamwork, sportsmanship, and physical fitness.
The only thing the winning team learned that day was how to be an asshole.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:14 am
He was fired after he publicly disagreed with the school’s administration. They apologized for the lopsided victory, and he basically dared them to fire him, so they did. This was a Christian school, that felt that mercy should have been involved.
I know we are all hyper-sensitive to the wussification of America and all, but there is such a thing as proper sportsmanship. It is even practiced in college and pro football. Once a team is severely beaten, you put in your second team, and run the ball.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:19 am
And not playing your best teaches kids that?
January 27th, 2009 at 11:46 am
The biigest issue that will never really be approached, and one that really must be addressed, is the way TAPPS (Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools) is layed out. It is why you have these lopsided victories amidst close games. You get teams like Dallas Academy that loose 100-0, and then you have teams like Jesuit who had to go out of state to find some decent competition.
I went to high school, and played football, for a TAPPS 5A school in Ft. Worth. We never played Covenant, nor Dallas Academy, but we played schools from Dallas, Ft. Worth, Addison, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin. The way TAPPS is set up, you really run out of options to have a full season. So, you tend to get set up against schools that really, to be painfully honest, shouldn’t even have a team. One of the articles I read on this mentioned that Dallas Academy has only 20 female students…thats hardly enough to have a decent pool from which to select tallent.
There is also an interesting seperation between the mentality that you are at a Christian school and what really happens on the field/court. Every Friday, our headmaster, a Marianist brother, would come on the loud speaker and remind us that we are all Christians, and to treat the other team with respect, cheer for our school not against theres, etc. In the locker room and on the field, it was drive the ball down their throats and don’t stop till you break them. In the morning it was shake their hands and thank them for a good game, and at evening it was if you didn’t hurt them you didn’t hit them hard enough. My best friend at the time played basketball, and he told me that it was very much the same there.
I have absolutely no problem with the score or what the coach did. I don’t believe in this “code of sportsmanship”, simply because it is BS. One of my coaches used to always say that one of the most important things sports do is to prepare you for the real world, and to a degree, he is right. In the real world, if you have two sales people, and one out sells the other by a signigicant margin, which one do you keep? The one whose not as good a sales person because, well, you want to be nice and fair? No. You keep the better one.
In my own very humble…I’d be far more insulted by the coach throwing in his third team and telling them to go easy on us and set it up so that we can at least get close to scoring.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:47 am
And I really need to learn to proof read much, much better.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Sportsmanship – Conduct and attitude considered as befitting participants in sports, especially fair play, courtesy, striving spirit, and grace in losing.
Beating a team 100 – 0 doesn’t display courtesy or fair play.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Restraint is a virtue, too.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:50 am
We are becoming England. Or France. Not good.
January 27th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
What I’d like to know is whether the benchwarmers got to play. If they didn’t, Grimes should indeed be fired, not for being mean to the other team but simply for being a dumbass. No point risking injury to your star player in a game you can’t lose.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
So it is better to be condescending and not play a weaker opponent as an equal. Which is worse, losing 100-0 playing hard, even though they are subbing in the bench, or losing 25-0 knowing they started playing half speed after the first quarter?
No report of how the actual teams played. If the winners played hard with taunts, unsportsmanlike. If they played hard but without comment, sportsmanlike and respectful of the other teams decision to take and remain on the court.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Xriq:
Outside the Beltway has links to stories, including:
“But Grimes disputes that charge:
After 3 minutes into play, we had already reached a 25-0 lead. Like any rational thinking coach would do, I immediately stopped the full-court press, dropped into a 2-3 zone defense, and started subbing in my 3 bench players. This strategy continued for the rest of the game and allowed the Dallas Academy players to get the ball up the court for a chance to score. The second half started with a score of 59-0. Seeing that we would win by too wide of a margin, running down the clock was the only logical course of action left. Contrary to the articles, there were only a total of four 3-point baskets made; three in the first quarter, and only one in the third quarter. I continued to sub in bench players, play zone defense, and run the clock for the rest of the game. We played fair and honorably within the rules and in the presence of the parents, coaches, and athletic directors for both Covenant School and Dallas Academy.”
January 27th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Most of Dallas Academy’s girls basketball games look somewhat similar to this- no wins this season, average scores were on the scale of 50 to zip. There were some games where they did manage to score 6 points or so, but they have all been seriously lopsided.
The impressive thing, to me, is that the Dallas Academy girls keep showing up to play, and keep plugging away.
What got the coach is trouble was his mouth, not running up the score. Dallas talk radio has been buzzing about this since it happened, and public opinion seems to be evenly split over him. Me, I don’t care.
Regards,
Rabbit.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I note that the Dallas Academy has a total of 20 female students of high school age, and provides services specifically for those with neural atypicalities great enough that they can not learn in conventional schools.
I don’t favor treating people like glass no matter how bad a case of ADHD they have, but it started being in bad taste a long time before a hundred points. I don’t mean to be the Handicapper General, but it’s really not a measure of success.
January 27th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
gatt and I agree on something! Time to go shower! 🙂
January 27th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I’m with gattsuru, too. I see nothing laudable in a big school beating the tar out of a tiny school for LD kids. Where’s the sport in it? Where’s the challenge? There was no question of doing their best.
January 27th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
In the early 1980s my dad was coach of the most successful girls basketball team in British Columbia. They played against a team in which, halfway through the game, the score was 80-0. It ended up 100-2 in the end, and that was because he put in his third-stringers and made them go easy. He said it was the worst experience of his coaching career. There’s no glory in such a defeat.
Reminds me of the Olympic pre-quals where the Slovakian women’s team beat Bulgaria 82-0. In hockey. But as far as I know, Slovakia didn’t fire the coach.
January 27th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
If comment no. 12 is accurate, what the Hell else could he have done? I agree that beating someone that badly just because you can is unseemly. But beating someone that badly just because you can’t avoid it sort of changes the dynamic doesn’t it?
Again, granting credence to no.12, it appears the only way he could have avoided it would to have been to have his team walk off the court.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
No kidding. I mean, what the hell else was the coach to have done, ordered his girls to throw a few “own goals?”
January 27th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Despite the strong feelings can we all agree that:
100-0 looks bad
Running his mouth to the media was stupid of the coach
It isn’t difficult to see why a culmination of the two led to his dismissal.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:25 am
The coach, after half time,could have put in his ‘B’ team for practice. He could have put in his bench warmers. But he didn’t. He went balls out to crush them. Now these were Christian schools. That is rather against their principles. Win yes, humiliate, no.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:25 am
The coach, after half time,could have put in his ‘B’ team for practice. He could have put in his bench warmers. But he didn’t. He went balls out to crush them. Now these were Christian schools. That is rather against their principles. Win yes, humiliate, no.
January 28th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Paul, you sound really sure of yourself. Were you there? ‘Cuz if you weren’t, I’m not sure why we should take your word over the coach’s.