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Post by CanyonCoach on Dec 7, 2022 10:00:14 GMT -6
Over the course of the last couple of days we have been blasted regarding the politics of All-State voting and that has spun into politics with our own team.
What does politics in sports look like where you are at?
I don’t see what parents see in football and I am a parent. Now girls programs, well that is certainly a different animal all together.
To add to this I had a former athlete tell me he quit because he didn’t have the right last name. He was a kid I tried to get into the weight room, would have loved on the track team and personally contacted to attend football related activities but he was a no show.
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Post by coachdmyers on Dec 7, 2022 10:19:41 GMT -6
Parents all want the best for their kids. Sometimes that manifests itself in unhealthy ways. When you think your kid deserves more but you think they're great, you need to find a reason that they're not getting what you think they should that validates your beliefs. So those reasons are bound to be external reasons, and "politics" is a vague enough term that accomplishes that pretty well.
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Post by raider92 on Dec 7, 2022 10:34:54 GMT -6
The "not having the right last name" thing should be in the biggest pet peeves thread for me. I had a parent pull that on me once and I told him its BS, I'm not from around here so the names mean nothing to me.
I've never once heard someone using that excuse where it wasnt just that, an excuse. Coaches want to win. I'm sure its happened here or there but the way every small town has crap like this is ridiculous. It's usually people who have had less success throwing stones at folks who have achieved success.
I absolutely agree it seems to be a bigger issue in girls sports. Let's just be honest, theres a ton of cattiness that goes hand in hand with being a 15-18 year old girl.
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Post by raider92 on Dec 7, 2022 10:48:16 GMT -6
Instead of just ranting like my last post here's my actual response to your question.
Theres a ton of politics here but they come from OUTSIDE the program not INSIDE it. School board members, principals, superintendents, boosters, band people, cheerleading people, etc., all want to get their fingers in the pie. When I first arrived here I had people coming out of the woodwork wanting to help support the program. It all comes with a price though.
All that "support" is surface level stuff for them to try and gain some influence. When it comes to support that actually matters i.e. facilities, money, S&C, holding kids accountable, etc., those folks seem to disappear.
If you give an inch they'll take a mile and you'll be the bad guy for trying to take it back. Let people get involved in the non essential stuff but never ever compromise on the practice field or game field
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Post by larrymoe on Dec 7, 2022 10:50:15 GMT -6
I have heard this several times throughout my life, and always just thought it was excuses. I've never lived somewhere or coached somewhere where last names or community standing influenced playing time.
Until we moved to where we live now. I can assure you there are places that your last name/community standing/ who your parents are get you preferential treatment.
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Post by larrymoe on Dec 7, 2022 10:52:11 GMT -6
I absolutely agree it seems to be a bigger issue in girls sports. Let's just be honest, theres a ton of cattiness that goes hand in hand with being a 15-18 year old girl. I don't know if you've noticed, but your average HS boy is every bit as catty as a HS girl these days. |
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Post by CanyonCoach on Dec 7, 2022 10:56:48 GMT -6
This season is an anomaly in some ways.
I went to HS with the TB’s dad.
I played in college with the WR’s dad
The QB is the 3rd in their family to play and both older brothers were All-state.
All of them are DI PWO and DII scholarship kids.
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Post by raider92 on Dec 7, 2022 11:42:18 GMT -6
I absolutely agree it seems to be a bigger issue in girls sports. Let's just be honest, theres a ton of cattiness that goes hand in hand with being a 15-18 year old girl. I don't know if you've noticed, but your average HS boy is every bit as catty as a HS girl these days. Oh absolutely. I just don't see it spilling over into sports in the same ways that it does in girls sports. I coach both. Love both. They're different though |
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Post by larrymoe on Dec 7, 2022 11:50:02 GMT -6
I never coached girls, outside the ones I had play football and wrestle. I wager they don't fall into your average HS girl category though.
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Post by coachcb on Dec 7, 2022 13:16:21 GMT -6
I don't know if you've noticed, but your average HS boy is every bit as catty as a HS girl these days. Oh absolutely. I just don't see it spilling over into sports in the same ways that it does in girls sports. I coach both. Love both. They're different though
You're correct, IME. A volleyball coach here had a daughter on the team who is a phenomenal athlete. She's playing D1 volleyball right now and was All-Everything for a couple years. Three years later, people are still saying she got those nods because her mother was the coach.
I don't miss the bullchit around post season honors. In my last year as HC here, we put eight kids on the All-Conference squad and one was All-State. But, I took crap long after I quit for not getting one of those All-Conference kids on the All-State roster. He'd been All-State as a junior but didn't play well enough as a senior to snag it again. He under-performed compared to his junior year and there was some excellent LBs around the state that year.
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Post by larrymoe on Dec 7, 2022 13:49:14 GMT -6
I served one year on Illinois' coaches association all state selection committee. Was shocked I got asked to do it. We were the smallest classification and the final spot came down to my kid and another kid whose coach was also on the committee. My kid was a 2 way (OL/DL) all conference selection, a Sr and a captain. He was our team. His kid was a JR OL who only played offense and was so immobile, they pulled their G & TE on counter trey. The coach's argument was my kid was "too small" to be all state. That was a new one. My kid got it. I wasn't asked back.
Fast forward a year and a half, his player is playing on an all star game I'm coaching. We're doing pre game warm-ups and I'm with the OL. I say "face our sideline, we're going to pull". Kid looks at me and goes "I'm not doing it. I don't pull." I wished him well in his future endeavors and he didn't see the field much that day. I later learned he quit the team at the D3 school he went to between practices on the first day.
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Post by CanyonCoach on Dec 7, 2022 13:59:51 GMT -6
This season is an anomaly in some ways.
I went to HS with the TB’s dad.
I played in college with the WR’s dad
The QB is the 3rd in their family to play and both older brothers were All-state.
All of them are DI PWO and DII scholarship kids.
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Post by Defcord on Dec 7, 2022 14:05:59 GMT -6
I ranted about something completely unrelated so I deleted it. All state and all star selections are silly and will never be selected based on merit because that’s not really competitive endeavors.
I’m no expert on them. But when I have a kid who doesn’t make it that should, I also complain about the politics.
When I was a head coach one of our opponents had a kid vs one of mine and we both argued each other’s was better because ours wasn’t great. We flipped on who’s kid would get it and mine won. I asked if he wanted to flip again but we just moved on.
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Post by joelee on Dec 7, 2022 17:05:34 GMT -6
I don't know about you guys but when I was coaching I put in too many long hours for 11.5 months a year to not play a kid who could help me win because he didn't have the right last name.
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Post by coachwoodall on Dec 7, 2022 18:03:16 GMT -6
Over the course of the last couple of days we have been blasted regarding the politics of All-State voting and that has spun into politics with our own team. What does politics in sports look like where you are at? I don’t see what parents see in football and I am a parent. Now girls programs, well that is certainly a different animal all together. To add to this I had a former athlete tell me he quit because he didn’t have the right last name. He was a kid I tried to get into the weight room, would have loved on the track team and personally contacted to attend football related activities but he was a no show. what do you mean by "have been blasted regarding the politics of All-State voting"?? In SC that is done by media and the like. There are some All Star/POY/etc.... type that require HC to nominate players to be selected by some other group. We do vote as head coaches for all region. There used to be some media top 10 polls that used HCs to get these teams. But again All State teams here are voted by media types, not coaches. |
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Post by kylem56 on Dec 7, 2022 18:40:50 GMT -6
So I am going to respond to this from multiple angles:
1) Being a Head Coach in a small town with 3-4 big last names but I was not from that small town
2) Being a coach in a small town with some prominent last names but I am an alumni of the school who is pretty darn well taken care of
At the ned of the day, Coaches are going to play those who best help them win games and further the mission of the program. However, where that gets lost in translation is especially since covid, I have seen coaches not do pre-season parent meeting anymore, communicate via email or social media and I think its still important to communicate face to face so parents can put a face with the person their children will be spending most of their waking hours with. Some other bits of advice is to be yourself. Do not try to fit it with various "classes" of people within your school. I am from a working class-blue collar level of our community and while the dynamics of my/our school have changed, I am not going to change who I am. I am willing to accept that this is who I am, and if you don[t like it, I will go to somewhere else. My school has been 100% supportive of me because of my transparency from day 1 and I think they appreciate the fact I dont try to be someone I am not. If you are in a town where you arent a "hometown guy" I think it is critical to do what I did when I took over a program that was 0-18, had 24 kids in the program 9th-12th and had 4 Head Coaches in ONE SEASON before our staff arrived. That secret was doing 20-30 minute home visits with every single kid we could over Christmas break. I didnt have kids at the time which helped but I drove all over south east Michigan and talked to families like I was recruiting for a college even though their son was already enrolled at the school I was hired at. I told them about myself, my vision for the program, and let them ask as many questions as they wanted on "their turf". If theres anything I can do to help or answer questions, feel free to message me. I'm rooting for you!
God Bless-
Kyle
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Post by 19delta on Dec 8, 2022 1:02:52 GMT -6
Parents all want the best for their kids. Sometimes that manifests itself in unhealthy ways. When you think your kid deserves more but you think they're great, you need to find a reason that they're not getting what you think they should that validates your beliefs. So those reasons are bound to be external reasons, and "politics" is a vague enough term that accomplishes that pretty well. I saw the small town politics thing first hand with my own kid. He was a 2-time, 2-way, All Conference lineman and 1st Team All State DL as a senior. He had 4 classmates whose families have lived in the district since Christ was a corporal. We are not from the area originally. Anyway, the parents of these other kids had this idea that senior year was going to be all about their 4 boys. The spotlight was going to be on them and everyone else was going to be a prop. Well, my kid was the best player on the team and that took the focus away from them. So, these kids and their families decided it would be better to blow up the season instead. They did what they could to ruin my kid's senior year. And our HC, while a nice enough guy, never stood up to these kids and parents because of what their last names were Needless to say, when we lost a must-win Week 9 game, my son was relieved that the season was over. My son and those 4 kids went on to play D3 football. 2 of them never made it to the first game, 1 of them quit after the first year because the coaches "weren't fair" (in other words, his parents couldn't intimidate and leverage the coaches on his behalf) and the last guy played 3 years but didn't make the roster until this year and only got in for a handful of plays in blowouts. And he is now "retiring" from football due to all his "injuries" 🙄. My kid, on the other hand, has been a rotation player since he stepped on campus and a starter this past season. He also earned All Conference Honorable Mention honors. So, while I still harbor some bitterness towards those families, the way things have turned out the last few years has definitely softened the edges |
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Post by CanyonCoach on Dec 8, 2022 8:18:15 GMT -6
Over the course of the last couple of days we have been blasted regarding the politics of All-State voting and that has spun into politics with our own team. What does politics in sports look like where you are at? I don’t see what parents see in football and I am a parent. Now girls programs, well that is certainly a different animal all together. To add to this I had a former athlete tell me he quit because he didn’t have the right last name. He was a kid I tried to get into the weight room, would have loved on the track team and personally contacted to attend football related activities but he was a no show. what do you mean by "have been blasted regarding the politics of All-State voting"?? In SC that is done by media and the like. There are some All Star/POY/etc.... type that require HC to nominate players to be selected by some other group. We do vote as head coaches for all region. There used to be some media top 10 polls that used HCs to get these teams. But again All State teams here are voted by media types, not coaches. Our QB has set school records and led our conference in passing yards and TD passes the last 2 seasons. We only have 2 conferences, the other conference QB is better no doubt, DI scholarship kid with a couple of Power 5 PWO offers. We choose 2 QB's for All-state 1st team. Last season our guy didn't get it because of the leadership qualities of the QB from the State Champion's QB. He handed off to the 2 best kids in the state and they ran behind a line that consisted of 5 kids who are all starters in college as freshmen. This year our guy was beat out because "There is no way we leave a DI commit of the 1st team". That DI commit is for basketball. Our guy was head and shoulders a better QB. And this discussion moves similarly to WR and to OL/DL. 3 coaches from each conference get to vote and 2 coaches in our conference went to schools in the other conference and tend to side with them on votes. The Blasted part is that we were a voting school this year but our kid didn't make first team. Also our stats defensively are about as honest as it gets...where as another team had 5 kids with almost 100 tackles, our leading tackler had 68 and only one other kid had over 60. We played 2 more games.... There is a coach in our conference who told another coach that he will never vote for one of our kids no matter how good a season he has..long story short: one of their assistants was chirping the kid about getting beat on a pass play..2 plays later he got a pick and gave their sideline the peace sign all the way to the end zone and at least 4 other incidents including he used to go to school in their district. |
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Post by MICoach on Dec 8, 2022 8:37:26 GMT -6
We have had a few parents of kids that transfered into the district suggest that we play kids based on donations and who their parents are and such... Mind you, these aren't kids we recruited or anything, they just transfered and happened to play football, and don't happen to be superstar talents. Also, we're a firmly working-to-middle-class district, it's not like we're getting big donations from anyone.
I hear this a lot from students in other sports as well...usually it also just happens to be that they're not very good. I've heard this from some women's basketball and volleyball players, and though I don't coach those sports I know the coaches pretty well and don't think they'd just choose not to play someone who would help them win.
I think with the explosion of things like personal trainers and AAU, every kid thinks they're a stud and if they're not playing its absolutely because the coach doesn't like them. We have average-at-best basketball players that play low level AAU, but assume because they play any level of AAU they must kick ass. We also have baseball players that pay for hitting lessons and pitching lessons and stuff, shoot I even have two shot putters who pay for personal coaches. None of those things are ever going to change your playing time if you're still smaller, slower, weaker, etc. It's also kind of a shame because these kids don't come from homes that have a ton of extra money and oftentimes the parents don't realize that it's just a money grab.
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Post by wolverine55 on Dec 8, 2022 9:54:38 GMT -6
Iowa does some "interesting" things with all-state teams. It is a combination of coaches vote and media-types vote, I believe. But, for instance, if there are multiple deserving QBs, one might make the All-State team as a defensive back even if he barely played DB all season long. That being said, literally every year I've coached--and that's 20 by now--I"ve seen things on All-Conference or All-State teams that just don't make a lot of sense.
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Post by agap on Dec 8, 2022 11:36:07 GMT -6
We always heard that at the last school I was at. This player was in the weight room four days a week and will be playing D2 football next season.
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Post by coachcb on Dec 9, 2022 9:54:02 GMT -6
Looking forward, how would coaches go about addressing this issue if it started to drastically affect the program? I worked under an HC who brought up post-season honors at the pre-season parent meeting. He stated "If you want to to be all-state or all-conference, we have to win games. If you want to be recruited to play college ball, we have to win games." Granted this was a powerhouse program but his words held true.
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