#1 [“I think when there is a turnover in Principals you get a turnover in coaches. Principals sometimes want a change, especially if coaches are not winning. If you don’t have the “Jonnies and Joe’s”, it is going to be tough. In my case, they wanted to go in another direction. I am fine with that. I still have a lot of football to coach and I know I am a darn good head coach.”] -Current Assistant Coach and former Head Coach in Hillsborough County
#2 [“A lot of times as in my case you get caught up in a situation where admin doesn’t support you because you’re not their guy. I was hired by a previous AD and my first year went great but he told me he took grief for hiring outside the circle set by our previous principal. Once he retired I was left hanging in the wind. I had road blocks at every turn and basically told if I stayed then things would be rough for me. Now I have coached high school sports for 29 years and have never run from a challenge but I can tell you I should have excused myself from there and not been so miserable for the next 3 years. My family suffered as well as my health because I kept butting my head into the wall. I thought as my old school coaches taught me to never quit and have no excuses. Problem is that old school values no longer are relevant and loyalty is a joke, especially in this county. I have worked all around the state and country and have never seen such a mess. You’re right it’s not W/L’s or community support because now you can alter a man’s life and career at a whim.”] –Former Hillsborough County Head Coach
#3 [“Here is no mentoring program to show brand new guys what and what not to do. But the biggest reason is the county not offering enough coaching stipends. If you can’t retain quality asst coaches, you’re dead-in-the-water!”] – Current Head Coach in Hillsborough County
Three former or current head coaches; three viewpoints pointing to an exponential better yet colossal amount of issues that could certainly carry us through the summer trying to address just these 3 separate, but equally paramount factors involving coaching in Hillsborough County. As evidenced by the amount of questions raised in part one of this piece, (19 in the last 8 paragraphs alone) this isn’t going to get any clearer or easier to fix by any means and in a timely manner. It’s going to be a process; a tenuous and even contentious one at that. As evidenced by these quotes there’s some serious disconnect, even with coaches that are seemingly content with their situations. They may SOUND like they’re content, but I’d be content too if I had a job right now. I’d also be as bitter as #1 if I had experienced these CONFIRMED experiences. Remember, it’s about playing the game not just coaching it as well and not just the one that’s between the hash marks.
As the research matriculates and the opinions start to evolve from anger and apathy into acting on solutions determined from a united front, the attitudes from all of those involved from the county AD to principals and on down the line (in theory) should change and the questions (in theory) should become more poignant due to the fact that we have become more educated in this process and will no longer accept simply a prepared response that carries less weight than a newborn child.
The highlighted sentences within these quotes are designed to reinforce what was introduced in part one, however these statements are not designed to “out” any coaches or else there would have been a name attached to them. I mean that. It’s NOT about WHO is saying these things, it’s about WHY they are saying them. People get caught up in who is saying or what they’re saying and lose sight site of both premise and perspective. Think of this as the Pepsi Challenge. You have no idea what you’re looking at, but you can taste it, feel it and form an opinion without your brain instantly creating a bias due to your eyes playing tricks on you.
For all you know, the people that made these statements are some of the most influential people in their craft. For all you know, they could be the EXACT people that could be just as much a representation of the problem and not the solution. For all you know, they could be neither and have a genuine desire to help yours truly do what is not strategically a very sound thing for them to do under the current climate which is to ruffle the feathers of those downtown at the district office and the administrators that they must face every single day on campus.
You’ve got coaches that would rather pass up HC positions in this county to continue serving as assistants because they’re hip to what’s happening around them. You’ve got coaches that would rather be assistants because in the HCPS Athletics Guidebook of Procedures they have four outlined responsibilities versus a HC’s twenty-three. Incidentally, under the current system, the HCPS Athletic Director has ten, while the Assistant Principals for Administration (or APA) have 24 outlined responsibilities.
I can speak from personal experience as a former athletic director at a middle school with 7 teams that not a single one of those are as “easy” as they have been made to seem through the language of the guidebook. Out of the 23 outlined for the coaches, you’ve probably got an additional 40 additional responsibilities buried within. That’s why you’ve got coaches that already understand that an assistant’s position at one school is head-and-shoulders above a head position which is simply defeating the purpose of motivating our best and brightest to take control of the wheel and bring us into the next phase of our youth sports.
If you take into account what was touched upon initially in part one, those responsibilities are added to the already burdened classroom educators. The guidebook in its entirety is 72 pages. That in and of itself is by all accounts the very definition of the foundation for confusion if you ask me. I’ve read the guidebook and you can too even if you don’t have a desire to. It doesn’t take a 4th-Grade English Teacher to understand that it’s loaded with content that is simply designed to cover the backsides of those running the show, but that’s actually for all involved. There are many sports covered in the manual, so it’s not the length that’s the issue per say, it’s that it’s proof there are requirements of coaches that go beyond what a coach should be concerned about on a daily basis. That’s not even counting coaches that may be AD’s in addition to coaching multiple sports.
If you go to the athletics guidebook http://athletics.mysdhc.org/update/Athletic%20Guidebook%20of%20Procedures%20HS.pdf and take a look on page six, tell me or better yet ask yourself the question, “Are these requirements as cut-and-dry as they’ve been seemingly made out to be?” Look at them closely. Read between the lines and add your own logic to it even, but read them. I can make the case (and will in the future) that some of those pretty much require a clone of one’s self or the creation of extra hours in the day. In other words, it looks like an attempt to scare off coaches rather than encourage them and it establishes plenty of room for failure to meet the responsibilities thus giving principals, APA’s and county administrators the ability to terminate their coaching positions for even the most mundane of tasks.
How important is it for coaches to recognize when they’re already losing the battle before even starting? Um, do I even need to answer that? Coaches have to ask themselves constantly “How bad do you want the position?” Again, look at the highlighted statement from quote #3. Tough to willingly adhere to every responsibility if you’re not willing to work for free essentially even if the intentions are pure. The most important thing to remember is that everyone (at least on the surface) is a human which means they are not perfect, but if there’s no mentor or there’s been a hire that represents favoritism over qualification (which we should stop kidding ourselves that it doesn’t exist daily in this county) then termination goes directly into the file and explanations must be given from now until employment has been ceased to be sought by an individual.
One thing that is VERY important I should point out is that classroom performance does not equate to on-the-field performance. These are two separate (and legal) issues. If a coach is let go from his position at the school altogether, it’s got to be legally justified and beyond a reasonable doubt in the minds of all involved that there was an egregious breaking of policy or policies involved. Simply firing a coach from his classroom position for his coaching performance is begging for a labor lawyer to eat that case like the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street.
Have you noticed that we are currently at 5,000 words (and now 2 full days into this series between Part 1 and now) and we haven’t even mentioned supplemental funding, academic performance and demographic influences and how they all intertwine with the athletics aspect? Well, of course you may not. I doubt you’re counting the words like my former English Professor at Stetson. I ask the question because those are the obvious ones that require an exorbitant amount of data crunching (and quite frankly I ‘d like to take some more time to look at those before going completely haywire and lose sight of the perspective AND the premise.) I’ll confess that I’m completely engulfed in this topic to the point that I re-wrote this entire piece after going to bed feeling that I had hit back-to-back home runs, but that’s the process of discovery and informational prioritization for you. Ah, the joys and pains of writing I guess.
I decided to focus on this single entity regarding the published expectations placed on those in position because without the coaches I don’t have the topic, the material to work with, nor do those that are reading this as non-coaches/teachers or parents have the proper context with which to apply the premise and perspective as we move forward and get deeper into the belly of the beast. It’s dark down there and the light that shines our way is currently dim. I decided to provide the link and stay true to my roots as a teacher by showing you HOW to learn about this, not WHAT to learn. I’ve mentioned on several occasions in pervious articles that we are in this together. Hillsborough County is home, and it would be a bigger injustice to speed through this process than Tony Stewart during qualifying for the Daytona 500.
It should be pointed out that during the introduction of this series yesterday, yet another position within the county opened up. That brings us to #7 and there’s enough ammunition from a single statement made from the school’s AD to launch an entirely new piece. It goes pretty much like this. Athletic Director responds to media’s questioning of termination, AD denies termination to media, 30 minutes later coach is terminated. Even the writer (who was completely justified in editorializing) was prompted to wish whoever decided to “take” that job good luck. Translation, your program may have just become a joke to half of the county.
It’s things such as this that permeate all aspects of the “business” of sports and the balance of information sharing between what’s public and confidential is, well there really is no balance. I don’t know the AD personally, but wouldn’t it be somewhat logical to assume that the timing of the statement and the timing of the action suggest that either someone is asleep at the wheel (specifically the AD himself) or there’s a direct link to a weak attempt to somehow pull the wool over the eyes of a no longer ignorant mass? This program is not the first and will certainly not be the last to completely screw up the sequence of sharing information.
They are however a much truer reflection of the disconnect between the AD’s and the principal’s themselves which may be even more precarious than coaches not being allowed to coach and do what’s best for their program. More on that later, but for now let’s take it and digest it like a plate of food. Cramming this down our systems all at once will cause us to get sicker than we already are. We can no longer afford to be ill, we’re running out of insurance or ASSURANCE that we are going to have a system that is designed to help not hurt all involved.
The logical progression (as I see it) is to address the parents and students next, (especially with regards to manipulation of the system specifically regarding transfers and the different levels of parental involvement from school-to-school) followed by the AD’s and administrators; then bring it back full circle. There are multiple issues STILL not addressed from the quotes at the top such as “old school values” and the formation and success rate of mentoring programs. Again, this is the TRUE reflection (in my humbled opinion) of the systemic problems mentioned yesterday. It’s got more layers to it and goes deeper than the trenches located in the Pacific Ocean. Let’s keep heading to the bottom of it so that we may come out on top in the end. Shall we?