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.