Should high school players have the right to refuse promotion to varsity?

Yes I think he should even if he isnt playing as much in games. When you pratice with people below your skill level it really does not push a player to get better. Sometimes it is a good thing to be humbled by people that are better than you are, it helps you develop into a better player down the road.

I had many friends that played on JV and Varsity sports many sat on the bench for games. One friend comes to mind who made Varsity soccer his freshman year. He didnt play much that first season but he went on to dominate for his last 2 years then moved his Sr year as he was asked to play for the Jr National team and was on the road for most of the school year. Do you think he was happy to ride the bench for most of his freshman year? I’d say not at all, but in the long run the experence of playing with people better than him helped him to achieve his goal of now playing pro soccer for (I believe Miami)

Sometimes its ok to ride the bench.

I agree with the context of your position. I tell Ben and Brad that philosophically they should be the worst players on the team. From that, they can learn from the other guy’s hard work and experience. Ben is playing up a year right now and I think he is developing by leaps and bounds as a result. Both boys played up in indoor over the winter.

But on the flip side, riding the bench does not grant experience on the field, right? Perhaps. So many times, we focus on the weekly game when in fact game time is only one hour vs. maybe 12 hours of practice throughout the week. And if you’re playing up, then it’s 12 hours of practice with better players than you. I suppose that’s more true for one game a week sports. Baseball is different I suppose with several games played per week. When Mary and I buy in to a season of club soccer for the boys, we’re not just buying one hour games a week. We’re also buying 10 hours of practice time with licensed, experienced coaches and time with other players of their caliber or greater.

So, back to Mr. Russell. Mike, your thoughts beg the questions, what does Mr. Russell want of his baseball experience? Does he want current playing time with the JV team because he loves the sport now, or does he want to serve the time on the bench with the varsity that might be necessary to project him to another level because he loves his game of the future?

Bruce

If you’re interested, there is a forum on the Rockford Registar Star website discussing this issue. Lots of interesting viewpoints.

http://cf.rrstar.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=20&threadid=5170

Bruce-

Please look up “begs the question” or “begging the question” in the dictionary or at least google it.

Well, I knew what I was trying to say in a “round” about way. :slight_smile:

Bruce

All hail Petitio Principii

And he follows with a perfectly appropriate sig line. Thanks, Bruce.

I am against the coach having so much power over these kids, but I agree with the point the checkernuts made, (I’m paraphrasing) something along the lines that if he is too good for the JV team then he should be on placed on the varsity team.

Now, I don’t know what ‘too good’ means or even if there is such a thing in high school base ball. I don’t play ball. But that would be only reason for the coach to be able to block him from playing JV ball if he turns down the varsity ball option. Coaches certainly must not be allowed to block the kid from other sports or from joining other (non-school) baseball teams.

Wow. I never thought coaches had the power to force a player to move up, or make them leave. At my high school, if you get asked to move up to varsity it definitely is an honor, just like it is everywhere else. If the player doesn’t want to move up, then the coach will just let them stay where they are.

Yes, the player might improve their game by playing at a higher level. But if they want to play where they are at, with a team they know and feel really comfortable with, where they are having fun… then they should surely be allowed to stay there!

This is a good example of how sports are taken too seriously, and too much emphasis is on them. I think Harper already kind of mentioned this in a better way.

Heh, this kind of relates to the abortion issue… Are you

PRO-CHOICE (the player should have the right to decide if he should move up or not)

or

PRO-TEAM (Do what is best for the team dispite what the player wants ) [in this case the highest team in high school - varsity]

Later,

Jess

Bruce-

I’ll tread-jack again and suggest that you should have countered with:

"Modern usage controversy:

More recently, to beg the question has been used as a synonym for “to raise the question”, or to indicate that “the question really ought to be addressed”. For example, “This year’s budget deficit is half a trillion dollars. This begs the question: how are we ever going to balance the budget?” This usage is often sharply criticized by proponents of the traditional meaning, but has nonetheless come into sufficiently widespread use that it is now the most common use of the term.

Arguments over whether such usage should be considered incorrect are an example of debate over linguistic prescription and description."

You should also have scolded me for cruelty. I am a sharply criticizing proponent and you are innocently applying a term in its now most widespread use.

Instead I want to thank you because, you know me, I like to be correct in my grammar and spelling. If it’s wrong but generally accepted nowadays (is that a word?) as correct due to over use, I still want to use the word or phrase correctly.

But if it makes you feel better…

Bad, Greg. Shame, shame, shame.

Will that do?

Just one question. When you tread-jack, are you elevating my stairs?

Sorry, just had to. :slight_smile: You’ll have to nail me next time I make a spelling error, and after reviewing some of my posts, I make a lot of them.

No. I’m stealing your tires. Good catch and right back onto the baseball topic.

Here’s a story from today’s Seattle Times

Prep notes: Meadowdale’s Blair quits over parents

By Michael Ko
Seattle Times staff reporter

Karen Blair, who built Meadowdale High School in Lynnwood into one of the state’s premier girls basketball programs, has retired, in large part because of the emotional wear-and-tear of dealing with two sets of parents.

Blair, 40, wouldn’t be more specific, but said last night she also felt she didn’t receive enough support from her administration or the Edmonds School District.

Edmonds School District athletic director Terri McMahan said she’s “disappointed that Karen would see it that way.” McMahan said the parents expressed some concerns, which were investigated by the district and found “petty” and “groundless.”

“This isn’t the district against Karen. These are the kind of parents that make a chill go up your spine,” McMahan said. “It’s disappointing that these type of people have won out.”

Blair, an industrial engineer at Boeing, graduated from Meadowdale in 1983. She began coaching at her alma mater as an assistant in the mid-1980s and took over as head coach in 1994.

As head coach, she compiled a 255-39 overall record and won two state championships. In WesCo games, her teams were 164-9.

Under Blair, the Mavericks have appeared in the last 10 state tournaments, winning Class 3A championships in 2000 and 2004.

Meadowdale moved up to Class 4A last season and was 22-0 before losing its last three games. .

More than 20 of Blair’s players have played or are playing college ball.

“Obviously, when I first came to Meadowdale, it wasn’t what it is now. I feel like I left it a better place,” Blair said. “Our players played with great sportsmanship and played the game the right way. To me, that was what it was all about.”

Blair attributes her success to an eye for detail and high expectations.

“We carried over those expectations onto our players,” she said, “and I was fortunate to have kids who stepped up to accept those challenges.”

The job will be posted by the end of the week, McMahan said.

Blair’s teams were always good representatives, McMahan said. “I always knew they were going to be focused and well-behaved and represent themselves on the court well,” she said.

Kids and kids play are over-organized from the age of 3. We have soccer leagues and t-ball leagues, then baseball and basketball leagues. Then in school, every sport is organized from the early grades on. I wish I could claim I was true to my values, but my kids do this too. I have a 5 year old son who just finished his 3rd season of soccer. My 7 year old daughter has been in gymnastics for about 11 years it seems. Is there even a sandlot available any more? Where could I go to find a pickup game of hoops?

I’m trying to figure out how the differences that I see between the way I played games as a kid 35 years ago and the way my kids play them are derivative of other differences in society. Our work habits have changed; our social geography has changed; urban and suburban developments - now downtown is dead, now suburban malls thrive; population migration patterns have shifted dramatically; corporations manage the executive and legislative branches of our government; the list goes on and on.

I think we over organize our kids lives because we’re afraid of the alternatives. We’re afraid of the cities swallowing our kids; and we’re afraid of being under attentive. Like detente: Trust but verify. The structure of organized sports gives us solace, provides us with something stable and concrete - something we can believe is safe.

I think this kid is a victim in a way. He got a raw deal. If they’d given him what he wanted, they’d probably have treated him like crap for the next 3 years anyway. I’m sure his pain is real.

But maybe in another way he has inadvertantly become a beneficiary of the system’s inflexibility simply by being ejected from it. Maybe now he can get in a sandlot game where kids are left alone to learn to organize themselves. Leaving them alone to learn to organize themselves is really the best thing we can do for them anyway.

At least one can hope…

Bruce, tell him and his parents good luck.

In a way this post segues nicely into what these fora are all about. Unicycling. An activity that is challenging and largely unorganized, leaving its participants to create their own form of organization. Or to thrive in anarchy if they prefer.

My post won’t be as eloquent as Munipsycho’s…

The coach is and egotistical ass. Didn’t get his way, so the kid and his teammates get punished. Varsity is an honor for most kids, but I can see why this kid wanted to stay down. I can’t believe there was no room for compromise in this situation. For that alone this coach is an ass. Was anyones interest served by his decision? One more reason to go private school. I hate the idea of paying twice for education, but these absurd anecdotes are far too frequent.

Way back at the beginning, I promised some insight into the coaches, athletic director, and others.

As I mentioned, Rochelle is that typical small American farming community town of about 9500 people situated in the northern middle part of the state far removed from Chicago and the 'burbs. During football season, nothing else exists on Friday night except the Hubs football game over at the field. You can hear the loudspeaker from the field all over town and many radios in the town are tuned to the local station to pick up the game. The next morning, the sports page of the newspaper has football coverage as far as the eye can see. Typical American small town.

Kevin Crandall is the head football coach and is also the athletic director. Doug Creason is the high school superintendent. Mr. Crandall is the winningest football coach in the history of the school and has taken the Hubs to the Conference championship and beyond most of his years here. You may be able to see where I’m going with this. There is a lot of power brewing in his office.

Several years ago, a teacher/girls track coach was fired for allowing his cross country girls to run on the football field. Not allowed to touch that precious parcel of land, you see. Can you imagine?

Creason and Crandall hate soccer. Soccer takes good athletes away from their football program. A handful of years ago, Rochelle had a pitiful soccer team run by a non-disciplinarian coach and a handful of individual (not team) players. About four years ago, Marianne Swanson, a high school guidance counselor and mother of two soccer players, decided to take over the program. Marianne didn’t know soccer from beans but simply had the desire. So she went to Creason and Crandall to request the means necessary to build the soccer program for the school. She was told “no” many times but Marianne was persistant. So finally, Creason told her that if she could raise $10,000 in the four months before the next season, she could give the program a shot. He figured that raising the money was an impossible task. What he didn’t count on was Marianne, who by the way was just voted this year’s Community Leader by our citizens for much more than just the soccer program. Marianne told me it was a very proud moment to walk into Creson’s office and slap that check down on his desk. So over the next four years, Mariane went to work and took the team to Conference Champion in the last three. Ben not only got a varsity letter last fall but was honored to be part of a conference championship team. He got a patch to sew on his school letter jacket.

Marianne has since resigned as the soccer coach but has a replacement, Mr. Javier Zepeda. I have been asked by Mr. Zepeda to be a volunteer assistant coach for this fall’s program, something I consider an honor and can’t wait to do.

A couple of the kids in our unicycle club were part of the Hubs football program. They told me that Mr. Crandall has made some very disparaging remarks during practice about soccer players in comparison to football players.

There is talk around town about wanting Mr. Crandall to be let go because his power and power hunger is getting out of control. In spite of his winning record, it might be for the best to even out some rough edges and bring some things back into perspective. Maybe that’s a good thing.

I’ll put in a disclaimer here. These are my thoughts from the perspective of where I stand in the community. I am not part of the inner sanctum of the superintendent and athletic director so I don’t know what all goes into the decisions that are made. Because I’ve been around this earth for awhile, I’ve long since come to fact that my little perspective is not the whole picture. There are always many sides to every story and even when I think I understand and maybe disagree with an issue or a decision made, there are other factors that are not in my vision. So most times, it seems that the only course I have to trust in the decisions and actions of those who are really in the know. I know that’s not always the best thing but sometimes its the only thing I have left.

Either way, we’ll go with the flow and be thankful for people like Marianne and others who have sacrificed so much so that Ben and Brad can play soccer for a good program at their high school. High school is only a very brief time in their lives and we know that there is life beyond these four years. But for now, it’s what’s on our plate and we’re enjoying it!

Bruce

I read through this whole long thread, with my eyes open for the “why.” In a situation where you don’t have clear policies on how things are supposed to run, you need good “whys.”

As for why did the boy want to stay in JV, it seems the main reasons were both relatively selfish ones; to stay with his friends and to play more and be benched less. These are both understandable, but if the school’s teams are looked at as a unit, he’s not benefitting the overall baseball team by holding back. See my edit below for more on this.

If, on the other hand, his reason to want to stay at JV level was because he was worried about too much time playing baseball interfering with his academic studies, that would be a different situation entirely.

So my conclusion on the “why” of the player is that it was more for personal reasons than for noble ones.

Now on to the coach’s why. According to the article, the school’s policy is “you can’t say no to any Hubs’ coach.” If this is a written policy, than he doesn’t need a why. Period. If something needs to change, it’s the policy itself, which comes from above the coach.

Also missing from what I read was a little more detail. If he refused the promotion, was he then told he would not be able to play at all? Or was he just told “You’re out!” That would be awfully lame. He should at least have had a choice of not playing, or moving over to varsity. I don’t know if he was offered that choice.

But based on the school’s supposed policy, the coach was acting within his boundaries. Also, I might add within what would seem to be boundaries that still include an educational approach to building successful sports teams.

Part of the team sports educational process is playing with teams that may not include your friends, as well as playing less on a harder team than playing more on a lesser one.

One must also consider the difficult position a coach appears to be in. If their job is based on winning, how can they not make it a priority in everything else they do? For them, winning defines success.

Of course you can focus on winning without maing it your ultimate goal, but this has not necessarily been brought up as an element of the current debate.

So I guess my decision on this whole thing is whether or not the school’s policies on team sports are written or well known, or if this is more of an arbitrary thing. Also, would the school take him back for the varsity team if he wanted back in? If not, one has to question the coach’s motives.

This all applies to the legal question as well. If the school has written policies to this effect, there is likely no legal recourse for the parents, even if they wanted to pursue one.

EDIT:
If the player in question is more interested in recreational (not-so-serious) baseball, a town league would seem the logical alternative. The fact that he was told by the coaches he would be “not welcome” there either, makes one wonder what part of the story we haven’t been told. What did he do to annoy the coaching staff? Simply turning down the offer to move up to varsity is clearly not enough, there had to be more to it.

I believe this is the case and I agree, it is understandable. Is it selfishness though, wanting others not to have what you have, or self-serving, wanting for yourself. I would have to vote for self-serving.

That should be the idea and both coaches and players should recognize this. But we’ve seen inconsistencies. The vice-principal is also the football line coach and the wrestling coach. At the end of the wrestling season, all accolades were given to the varsity squad including appearances in the end-of-season memory video. JV had no part. When I questioned the coach and tried to insert that the JV squad was a part of the overall team as well, he explained that they focus on the varsity because that’s where the conference points are gained.

Also, there is a Hubs Sports website. During the season, the staff picks a wrestler of the week. In a week when the varsity did not have a match, the JV squad attended a Frosh/Soph tournament with twelve teams. Three freshmen won tourney champ in their weight class. When I suggested that because these three freshmen faced great odds and came out on top, they should be considered as wrestlers of the week, I was told that the wrestler of the week is a varsity incentive.

I don’t know for sure but I don’t believe that it is a written policy. In my opinion only, it was an on-the-spot decision by a power-hungry athletic director. This is our first year in high school sports and Ben participated in both soccer and wrestling. We have never been issued such a directive.

There are always two sides to every story and I’m sure we don’t have all the details. Good questions, John. The summer league mentioned is somehow connected with the high school, I’m not sure exactly how. There is park district ball I believe in which the high school has no say.

Should students have the right to promote to the next grade or refuse to promote if they don’t want to?

I wuld hav likd to staa in 10th grade a fuw mor yers to mastr spelng, but they made me go on.

With Bush’s NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, all the kids who make the national reading scores look bad for politicians do not get to enter 4th grade (or 8th grade). I guess that’s a money issue too.

maybe students shouldn’t have any rights.

Billy

is that rite???