When a starter is benched

[SLEDGEHAMMER]

The best part of attending a small high school: Everyone knows everyone personally.

The worst part of attending a small high school: Everyone knows everyone personally.

Sometimes we all forget the real purpose of high school sports.Good luck to all the young ladies on the Van Buren Basketball team. Especially to the one I am related to and the one I have been privledged to get to know better in the last few months. I think you are both wonderful people on and off the court.

[Coach_B]

Summary:

1) The specifics about your daughter should not have been posted. It's the tone of your post that surprises me.

2) Personal attacks are not a valid argument. If what your saying is true it should be defendable without personal attacks.

3) Are these posts for you or your daughter?

4) I'm not against criticizing a coach including Coach Binkley. What's important though is the way in which it is done.

5) Teams need to focus on their team goal. Everything else is minor compared with reaching that goal.

 

 

 

This problem arose when some specifics about the situation were posted. That should have never been posted in the first place. Most people would agree that its perfectly acceptable to give the facts & clear up any falsehoods from peoples posts about your daughter. Its the tone of your posts that make me think of someone that is a bit out of control. I guess we just disagree on how we would want to be defended by parents. I still wouldn't want a relative posting in your tone on a public forum that people across the state will see.

 

Once again personal attacks are not valid to an argument. If an insane person and a medical doctor are arguing whether or not the doors in our school are maroon or green it matters nothing their occupations. The door is maroon regardless of whether they agree on it or not. It's easy to attack the person to discredit an argument, but then you're not attacking the argument itself. Maybe the Apostle Paul shouldn't have said anything about marriage. Maybe Condoleeza Rice shouldn't say anything to the parents that have lost soldiers in the war since she has never had children.

 

I don't claim to know what it's like to be a parent whose daughter was attacked. At the same time are these posts for you or your daughter?

 

In the past 2 & 1/2 years I have probably criticized Coach Binkley more about basketball than anyone in this county. If Mr. Howard & Mr. Bouldin could see me on a few of the weekends they would likely be jealous. It just appears that I am against criticizing him because

1) I normally don't criticize in front of a huge number of people.

2) I will say in front of a large group of people the many things I have seen Coach Binkley do great for the girls basketball program in VBC.

3) When I do criticize I try to stick to specifics. An example being for the first two years we disagreed on whether or not our man defense should take girls to the middle or to the sides. I showed him Summit & Auriemma teaching to take them to the sides. I talked with him about why I believed it was better in general & better for the talent we had on the floor. Sometimes those conversations were more civil & sometimes they were less civil on my part. That's one example among many. Either way though I tried to limit the number of people who were around because ultimately he is the coach & the girls need to buy in to what he says regardless if I disagree.

 

Getting back to the original point topic I have no problem with her being benched for missing practice. If that's a position that a coach wants to take then that's fine with me. When I played basketball @ Sparta I knew the other teams offenses better than my own. If we played a team on Tuesday the non-starters had to know the team's offenses by @ least Monday's practice. That way in Monday's practice & Tuesday's walkthrough we could drill our 1st team over & over until they knew exactly what the other team was going to do. If you missed Monday's practice it was more than missing skill practice (shooting, rebounding, dribbling, etc). You missed knowing the opposing team's offense which means you would have to try to learn everything in Tuesday's walkthrough. There was a really good chance that the person who missed wasn't going to start although it wasn't a guarantee. Knowing me under the circumstances I probably would have started your daughter, but I have no problem with the coach not starting her. Ultimately it is a non issue & up to the coach. We had the goal to make the state. We backed our coach completely in any of those type of decisions. Starting, points, time played, everything was a backseat to making it to the state. This was followed by everyone on our team except for 1 person who eventually left for the better. If we won everyone had a good game. If we lost none of us had a good game with regard to individual accomplishments. My honest assessment of basketball in general in the county is that personal accomplishments have got to take a back seat to team goals. It pains me to hear after losses "so&so played good because he/she had 20 but the rest of the team didn't play well" or "the refs cost us the game." The group of kids that will have a common goal, stick together, not make excuses, & work to meet their goal will likely make the state.

[Coach_B]

Thanks for your ' thought', Mr. Seagraves. That 'thought' and 50 cents MIGHT buy me a cup of coffee. Oh, and if you need the money for gas to come to our county, I'll be glad to pay your way. Come up to the mountain. I would LOVE to meet you. And once again for people like you who are slow to grasp concepts, I will repeat myself for the last time. I didn't START this forum about my daughter. I just had the guts to defend her when she couldn't defend herself. Many people woudn't be willing to do that, and use their real name.

 

...This isn't, and never has been your business, Keith. I realize that you can offer up an opinion on an open forum, but I would hope that most people would only offer it up to give needed information, if something pertains directly to him or her, or to help someone or someone's team. You haven't helped anyone...

 

 

Shawna,

 

In defense of Keith, the original poster made it his business. It was a broad topic given to the Coach T community. He was nice enough to give us unbiased opinions from someone who has no ties on either side of the argument. Regardless of whether or not you think his information was wrong, Mr. Wooden opened the topic up to everyone on these boards. I was under the assumption that the OP was your husband, but that is just hearsay. It could be a 15 year old kid or an 80 year man for all I know. Either way you should probably figure out who it is & politely ask them not to post situations that closely resemble your daughter's. I would do that anyway if I didn't want people from around the state giving their opinions.

[ksgovols]

Thanks Coach B. I don't have a dog in the fight. I didn't even know where Van Buren County was exactly until this week.

 

The other thing that I would remind everyone is that there is more personal information on this thread than I would allow my teenagers to put on their myspace page. I'm going to contact coacht about deleting this thread altogether. In the meantime I'm editing my posts. I'd suggest others do likewise.

[owls1987]

Oh to be in Van Buren Co. at tipoff! /popcorneater.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":popcorneater:" border="0" alt="popcorneater.gif" />

[jjd]

After reading these throughout the year is seems to me that Van Buren's girls are going through what Community's boys went through last year. Parents constantly complaining about the coaching. Except that your girls are the only team to beat Forrest in 2 and a half years in district competition and got to the region semis last year which are both good accomplishments. I've seen where at times you've been sporadic this year, but that happens from time to time. It looks like things are getting on track now. I hope your girls don't listen to the outside voices and tune in to the coaches for the remainder of your season because you are very talented. And most of all I hope your administration don't fold to the pressure (if it's being applied) like Community's did. Good luck to you except when you play us!! Go Champions!!!

 

 

 

Sounds like you should get your facts straight about Community before you criticize the parents. There is always more than one side to every story, and it sounds like you don't know both sides. Go Vikings!!!!!