Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Irrate Sports Parents 2

A good friend commented on the story about the Florida High school teams and makes a good point. If your son can make All State ( and a college scholarship), the stats are very important no matter who you play. He also reminded me that the winning coach could have set the final score much higher than it was.

That reminded me of another Haskell Story.

In 1959 Haskell played Barnsdall. My Brother, Tom, was the starting half back on Haskell's Football team. He was the top scorer in the State that year (in any class) and averaged about 20 points a game (himself!). Barnsdall was a bad team and Haskell scored at will. In the second half Coach Shockley called the players to the bench in a time out and told them, "If you don't let that team score, I will run you until you drop next week in Practice!"

When play resumed, their quarterback gave the ball to the running back, the line parted and he took off down the field. My brother, who also played in the secondary on defense, ran beside him all the way down the field as he scored.

So much for sportsmanship. I don't know which would be worse: to not score or to be given a score?

It was not what the coach had in mind.

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