High School Coaches are Asses

In case you haven't seen this, apparently a High School women's basketball coach in Texas has been fired for allowing his team to beat a school of "handicapped" girls 100-0.

I have very mixed feelings about this...first of all, and lets get this out of the way: the school is not for "handicapped" girls, at least not in the physical sense. And really not in the psychological sense, either. It has garnered a reputation for being especially good at helping kids with learning disabilities, such as ADD or dyslexia. So any story that you read that tries to heap on the sympathy for these girls is, in my opinion, a load of shit. It is true that the team is winless this season, and has been for the last four seasons, but you can't blame only being able to take seven shots in an entire game on a reading disorder. Shit, Jim Abbott only had one arm and he pitched a no-hitter.

But all that aside, it is still a pretty fucked up case. My high school in Pennsylvania was just large enough to force us to play in a division that included larger schools from Harrisburg, York, Gettysburg, etc...teams that were much, much, much, much, much, much, much better than us. I think our football team won 3 games the entirety of my high school career. I played soccer, and we would routinely get beat 8 or 9 to 0. But I rarely felt as though the other team was running up the score. Sure, they would get excited that they were playing shitty little Waynesboro Area Senior High and would score a pantload in the first half, but then the coach would settle them down, put in their shitty players, and then they would continue scoring at a much reduced rate. We sucked, but we realized it was our own fault - not theirs for having a bit of fun at our expense.

But 100-0?

How do you play four quarters of basketball and not allow the other team to score one point, while you are scoring a ton (especially for women's basketball), and not realize that you may be putting the pressure on a bit too hard? I mean, when I used to play my little brother when I was in shape and he was still like 10 or something, he would still score a point or two to my 21. You really have to be putting the pressure on to have the other team not be able to put up one point in four quarters.

So, when I read that the fired coach is completely unapologetic, and claims that his girls were playing within the spirit of the game, I have to respectfully disagree. Most high school coaches were players themselves at one point...and a great majority of them were failed players at some point. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't be coaching at a girl's school in the middle of Texas. I understand that most of them take their coaching responsibilities a bit too seriously. But it takes a special kind of ass-hat to not think that putting that hard of a beating on another team is within the "spirit of the game".

I dunno. Women's basketball sucks anyway.