Throwback

First off I want to wish everyone a happy Independence Day.  By the time you're reading this, it's probably not the 4th anymore but it hasn't hit midnight yet as I write so it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge the holiday.  I hope you all had a fun, eventful and most importantly, safe weekend of celebrating.  Because it's late in the day and the sports world is downright lame right now, I'm going to do something that I won't make a habit of.  Every once in a while, this being one of those times, I'm going to post a column that I wrote for "The Maine Campus."  This particular one was published on April 23, 2009.  Enjoy...

Pretend you’re the head coach of a high school basketball team. What is the last possible thing that you can ever imagine getting fired for? Probably winning, right? Well, that’s the reason that a Texas high school basketball coach was relieved of his duties back in January. And it wasn’t just the fact that he had won, it was the fact that he had done so by too many points.

His name is Micah Grimes, and he was the head coach of The Covenant School’s girls basketball team. After an astonishing 100-0 victory over Dallas Academy, a team that plays in the same private school conference as The Covenant School, Grimes was fired for humiliating the other team and not representing a “Christ-like and honorable approach to competition.” I don’t mean to sound uncompassionate, but this was a varsity basketball game, not an elementary school intramural game where everyone gets to play. If you’re going to fire the guy for winning by too many points, then why did you hire him in the first place? To instill an attitude of mediocrity in his players? I sure hope not. In his four seasons there, Grimes took his team from a 2-19 record to a state championship contender, a resume that would most certainly earn any other coach a raise. Unfortunately for Grimes, his 100-point victory resulted in the loss of his job.

The reason that this story became such a big deal is that Dallas Academy is a school for students with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia and dysgraphia. Naturally, our reaction is to sympathize with those girls who were obviously not at the same athletic or competetive level as the girls from The Covenant School. I’m not overlooking that, but the truth is that they are in the same league and play the same level of competition. It is completely their own decision to play at that level, which means they must deal with the consequences. If they’re worried about their players being emotionally affected by a loss like that, they should not be playing in that league.

After all, Dallas Academy’s athletic director admitted that the girls don’t play for the victories, but rather their hopes to improve skills and develop teamwork. He went on to say how proud he was that his girls gave everything they had regardless of what the score was. If that’s the case, why was this game made into such a big deal? That’s especially a good question when you consider that they lost other games this year by deficits of 50 and 60 points on multiple occasions.

Think of it this way: If there was a high school debate competition and one team outscored the other by a huge amount, would the team that won be punished? Would the coach get fired for preparing his team too well? Obviously the answer is no, so why is it okay to treat athletics that way? I don’t know the answer, but I know that it’s ridiculous when people are getting fired for performing their job duties to a high extent. Sorry Micah, I’m sure there are a thousand high schools around the country that would love to have a coach like you.

"Winning is not a sometime thing, it's an all time thing.  You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.  Winning is habit.  Unfortunately, so is losing."  -Vince Lombardi

-Brusk Dollas