I've been a youth football coach for 20 years. This article is spot on and to Suicides and Laps, I'd add Up Downs and Snaking the Field.
WTF is wrong with these people? The Coach is 100% correct and set a proper example. It's TEAM first. Always. For every player. It's not a democracy, it's an absolute dictatorship with me at the helm. My players answer questions in only 2 ways: Yes Sir or No Sir. My teams have won 2 Championships. My players and parents REPEATEDLY ask to be on my team. They have never once complained about the way I enforce team related discipline.
This is such a gross distortion of all that is good with team sports. I suspect the people that made this decision have never once volunteered their time to coach children.
Had s similar issue when I was playing youth soccer.
Coach had a rule that if you did not make it to at least one of three practices during the week....you could not play on Sunday.
We had a history of success under this coach including a 2nd place finish (we were firced to move up a division after 1st 4 games of season 1 and our 4 wins were made into ties for the standings due to dominance) and a championship in season 2.
Early in season this kid missed all three practices one week. He had no excuse for missing the 1st two but was at a church sponsored snow sledding event for practice three.
Coach said he could not play per his rules.
Family complained that he was being discriminated against due to his religious activity (snow sledding.)
League caved to threat of lawsuit and coach would not cave in....
We lost our coach and the team fell apart.
RIP the Spanaway Shinbusters!
“You can’t torment our children this way. They’ll act out when they get to adulthood and point back and say the reason they robbed that old person in a wheelchair is because my coach made me run laps for bullying”
I once had to run laps for showing up with dirty socks.
Typical Washington Post commenters trying to infer that where this happened is a “Conservative” area.
BS - Durham Connecticut is 57% democrat 41% republican. That’s hardly “Conservative” unless you are comparing it to Havanna.
Nick Saban would always defer to a players feelings...../s
Somewhere Vince Lombardi is in heaven scowling wishing he could make us all run “grass drills”. (That’s what we called them in Jr High & High School football.)
Why do we all need to be made to run “grass drills” because we have allowed this “crap thinking” (If you can call it thinking!)to infect the nation!
Looks like the coach was bullied!
The coaches sin was to not follow the approved progressive bullying indoctrination protocol....
He made the kid run laps instead of shaming him in front of his peers...