Bad Loser?
Kyle Queal Micah Grimes, the head coach of a girls’ basketball team in Dallas, was fired after his team lost a game 100-0. Oh wait, I misread the article. Actually, he was fired for winning by that margin. Huh?
More here and here. And, for those with a thing for horses and their mouths, here.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I really don’t understand it. They were up 59-0 at half, so it looks like he did pull them back, not that he was trying to run up the score. The article complained that the girls were still taking 3 point shots in the second half — if they are beating you 100-0 on just three pointers then I don’t see what else he could have done.
My family was very involved in youth soccer, and you see similar things there. Yes, it is one thing when you get beaten 15-0 because the coach kept the first string in as much as possible. It’s another thing when his best players are on the bench 2/3 of the game and you still get beat 15-0. There’s only so much he can do. You can’t tell the kids, “stop playing.”
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January 26th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
The losing coach and parents were being twit-like. And someone in charge apparently wants to abolish scoring as somehow “unfair”.
Putting the scrubs in the game to avoid embarrassing the other team would be an almost unforgivable insult to the losing team, if they were actually good sports-people.
You are supposed to do your best, both winners and losers.
If your best isn’t good enough, then you are supposed to be graceful about losing.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Kyle McQueal is the headmaster. Micah Grimes is the coach that was fired.
I guess I’m a pinko communist because I don’t object to the firing at all. Teams don’t win 100-0 by accident. By most accounts, once they got to 100 they did start to let up. They needed to do so after the first half. I don’t entirely blame Grimes, though. Shooting for 100 is in the coach’s mentality. Telling kids to relax halfway into the game is not. The league clearly needs a slaughter rule and they need to accept some responsibility.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:28 am
If you read the linked article, it seems that the losers didn’t complain; the winners did. And the coach was not fired for winning, he was fired for defying the administration’s policy decision and attacking the administration (rather dishonestly I thought). Any boss who wouldn’t fire him under those circumstances deserves to be fired himself.
And the coach was kind of smarmy, talking about the “courage” of his team in defeating another team 100 to 0. I don’t know exactly what you call the mental quality that lets someone beat up on a helpless opponent, but I’m pretty sure that “courage” is not the right word.
None of this seems surprising in a Christian school league, and I would suggest that Christians have a right to teach their kids that winning isn’t everything.
It isn’t, you know.
January 27th, 2009 at 7:00 am
You’re right; technically he wasn’t fired for winning, just for taking issue with the fact that the school apologized for winning. Had be fallen on his sword and publicly admitted that it was un-Christian to play a game to play a game competitively (I’m pretty sure there’s something in III Timothy about that), he’d likely still be on the job.
As to Christians having the “right” to teach such silliness, let’s just say this was never about rights. They have a “right” to teach kids that the moon is made of green cheese and fire any science teacher who publicly questions that view, but the rest of us have a right to mock them for it, too. It’s also not a question of winning being everything. I’m not aware of any evidence that his team cheated; are you?
January 27th, 2009 at 8:51 am
[...] what is truly a sign of the times, a coach has been fired because he did not apologize for his team beating another team 100-0. And, amazingly, the press [...]
January 27th, 2009 at 10:05 am
He should ‘let up’ if they’re winning? WHAT?!?
NO! He should teach his students to play to their fullest potential at every moment, score be damned!
January 27th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Workwifdakids,
Hypercompetitiveness is a trait that frequently backfires. It makes it difficult for people to be comfortable around you, which makes it difficult for them to accept you. If you’re playing racketball with the boss, who isn’t as good as you are, and you have the opportunity to “go for the kill”, I would not recommend doing so.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:09 am
One article I read in an online Dallas paper said the winning team scored the 100th point with nearly 4 minutes left in the game. And they couldn’t score again?! C’mon, they were shooting for 100 and didn’t quit till they got there. Then they pulled back. Ridiculous behavior by the winning team. When it was 56-0 at half time you have your team play defense inside the 3 point line, not full court press until it is 88-0, and run the shot clock down to 10-15 seconds before you take a shot in the second half, not score nearly 4 points a minute.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Back in 1973, I went to a newly opened high school. The prior year the school had been a sort of middle school with only freshmen and sophomores. Juniors and seniors went over to the high school. When the school was made a high school, the sophomores stayed to become juniors and would be the first graduating class of the high school.
That year we played a varsity schedule in football, even though we had no seniors. The state football league had a rule that if the point spread was more than 45 points during the second half, the game was over. We had 3 or four games ended on us by the 45 point rule.
I was a 2nd/3rd string player on the team. And mostly, we hated having the game ended early on us. Most of us wanted to have the game playing experience. And the rule denied that to us.
It also had an interesting effect on the coaching. As I look back, I think I now understand the reluctance of the coach to play more 2nd/3rd string players, even though the 1st string wasn’t being productive. He was interested in keeping the game from being shut down more than building any depth.
The fact that the game was ended early was more disheartening than the loss, I think.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
:headdesk:
Dallas Academy has a total of 20 female students at the high school grade level, and provides services emphasizing on and focused on educating those with developmental disorders that prevent them from learning well in other schools.
At some point, it starts being in bad taste.
January 27th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
At some point, sure, but on whose part? These teams should not have been in the same league, but it’s not Grimes’s fault that they were.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:42 am
I think that the main reason that the teams are in the same league is that for men’s sports, they’re competitive. TDA’s men’s basketball team beat Covenant’s twice this year and has a better record. I think part of the problem is that TDA is a primarily male school, which makes it difficult for girls to compete with a much smaller pool from which to pick players. I think it’s pretty uncommon for boys and girls sports to be in two separate leagues, but that may well be what needs to happen here.
Some additional context, most of it favorable to Grimes.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Xrlq, he didn’t just “refuse to fall on his sword”, he openly defied his bosses and took the dispute public. An honorable man resigns when he has that kind of dispute instead of forcing his bosses to fire him.
And when I said that they have the right to teach their kids that, I didn’t mean the legal right, I meant the social right. I meant that this is a perfectly reasonable and good thing to teach kids, and that mocking them for it is wrong.
One more thing: I don’t think anyone was suggesting that the coach should have told his team to try less hard in the second half. There are lots of other things you can do to avoid running up the score:
1. Stop the full-court press and go to a half-court zone defense.
2. Tell the team to make five passes before the shot (this is good discipline anyway).
3. Put your worst players on the floor (this would be fun for those players who don’t get to play much).
4. Have your poorer scorers take all of your shots (another thing that is good for team development).
By the way, I’m not necessarily against the coach on this. Going for a hundred points was probably pretty exciting for the team and I can see why he wanted to do it. And if all he did was refuse to apologize, then it would be a closer call. But when he goes public in his defiance of his boss, then either he or his boss has to go. Anyone in management will tell you that.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
At some point, sure, but on whose part? These teams should not have been in the same league, but it’s not Grimes’s fault that they were.
I think that’s the real reason he was fired. He made the
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January 29th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Doc, did you read Grimes’s account of the game? He says he did at least half of the things you say he should have done. For all you or I know, truly running up the score would have resulted in a 200-0 margin, or more. After all, 100 isn’t that high of a score in basketball.
January 29th, 2009 at 4:51 am
Xrlq,
In girl’s basketball at that level, it is that unusual. When I first saw the score it was the “0″ that jumped out at me. But wading through a bunch of scores, a team scoring fewer then ten points wasn’t that uncommon. A team scoring over 80 was quite rare. In TDA’s other games (that I could find), they allowed 55, 66, and 49 points.
That being said, I have come around to the belief that Covenant could have scored well more than they did if they’d wanted to. I’m not convinced that they couldn’t have scored less without resorting to intentional misses. I find it unlikely that his team made much of any attempt to run down the clock as he suggests.
Which isn’t to say that I think that the coach should have been fired for the game performance alone. I agree with Doc that the real problem was his open rebellion. Not that the school didn’t have it coming with their open condemnation of the team, but it made his continued employment unworkable.
Also, there was a reason that this game was scheduled: these two teams are in the same district. And except for girl’s basketball (and maybe other girl’s sports), they deserve to be. The Academy’s boys team beat Covenant’s twice this season. TDA has lopsided enrollment with a lot more boys than girls, which leaves their girls in an unfortunate situation.
Scheduling and districting at private schools is a tricky business because (a) there’s a scarcity of schools and (b) enrollment and gender balance can (apparently) vary wildly. With that in mind, I do think that the league needs to have some sort of Mercy Rule. After the publicity surrounding this game, I’d imagine that they’re looking pretty hard at it.