This caught my attention today on my home page. Two Florida high school teams played last week. One team, Naples, was defending state champs. The other team, Estero, was building back a dead program with a first year coach and only 25 healthy players. Naples won by 13.
13 touchdowns! The final score was 91-0. Naples led 70-0 at half time.
Naples tried everything it could to hold down the score including not letting the starters play.
The Estero coach did not think Naples did anything wrong. He said, "We just didn't do anything right! It was David versus Goliath and David didn't have a stone to throw."
As the title of this piece stated the parents were irate. The parents of the
winners were mad that their sons did not get enough playing time "to pad their stats".
p.s. Guess what this wasn't even the highest score last week. In Ohio two teams played and the score was 96-0.
13 touchdowns! The final score was 91-0. Naples led 70-0 at half time.
Naples tried everything it could to hold down the score including not letting the starters play.
The Estero coach did not think Naples did anything wrong. He said, "We just didn't do anything right! It was David versus Goliath and David didn't have a stone to throw."
As the title of this piece stated the parents were irate. The parents of the
winners were mad that their sons did not get enough playing time "to pad their stats".p.s. Guess what this wasn't even the highest score last week. In Ohio two teams played and the score was 96-0.
1 comment:
While I agree with the idea that the parents were a off-base, I do see something from the perspective of a former member of the sports media and a person who has seen those two schools play each other before, in person, with a very different result.
If you are, say, voting on an all-state team and you haven't seen every kid in the state of Florida play (which is every voter for any all-star team), you will use statistics to help make a decision.
And if running back X has 1800 yards rushing, and running back Y from Naples has 1600 yards rushing and sat out a game against Estero, that sitting out a game is going to get lost in the shuffle. And if I were the parent of one of those kids, I can see how something that might put your kid at a disadvantage rile you up.
Of course, they are missing the bigger point. Personally, I hope the Naples coach gets some credit for trying to teach his stars a lesson that just because you can do something (pad your stats, win by 150 points, etc.) doesn't mean you should.
I think the Naples coach deserves credit, especially since the Estero guy understood it could have been worse.
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