Amazing work uncovering abusive coaches

goalmouth · May 25, 2022

Don't take shit from anyone.

MileHigh · May 25, 2022

Smallpotatoes · Sep 1, 2022

Hat Man is OK with coaches treating athletes like shit.

The 29-year head coach of our local Cal women's swim team has been under fire for months about being too harsh. Cal is the U of California at Berkeley, famous for People's Park and tree sitters the Free Speech Movement and riots.
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The female woman's coach has won four national championships. The paper gave no other details. With that many national championships I expect her winning percentage is 75% or thereabouts.
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I coached about three dozen athletic teams. I also graduated from West Point, was a landlord for 23 years and a property manager of other people's property and a platoon leader and company commander in the Army.
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The harsh drill sergeant who is harsh because he knows it will save the men's lives in combat is pretty well known if not fully understood by the public. John Wayne played such a marine sergeant in Sands of Iwo Jima. His character was a Guadalcanal vet teaching raw recruits how to avoid the casualties he saw in Guadalcanal. The recruits hate him because they think he is mean for no reason.
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Is a college swim meet not Iwo Jima? Of course not. But how many national championships have you won? Winning a national championship in the US which is probably best in the world usually, is no doubt EXTREMELY difficult---beyond the imagination of almost everyone.
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In my Succeeding book, I said you might not want to set such a high goal because the price of victory is too high. For one thing, many at those levels cheat. For another, it probably precludes a balanced life which is also a worthy goal and a more comprehensive one.
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When I was a kid in the 1950s, there was a consensus on the best way to parent: tough love. That is what Sgt. Stryker did in Sands of Iwo Jima. It is what almost all good coaches do.
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In my preseason parent meetings, I warned parents that they would think we coaches were too harsh. "Regarding football, I will have a parent relationship with your son and you will have a grandparent relationship. I will tell your son 30 times to do X when you're not there and then you arrive to pick him up and you hear only the 31st time and you think it was too harsh. Until the kid complies, it apparently was not harsh enough."
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I do not know the Cal swim coach Teri Mc Keever. She may be too harsh. But her accusers---swimmers and their parents---are really not likely to be in a position to know. Other coaches would be. Parents and kids today are full of a hodge pidgeon of child raising theories from Dr. Spick and T. Berry Brazelton and Montessori and all that.
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One of the principles in my Succeeding book I call oomph. I have observed many top leaders up close like Bob Ladouceur at De La Salle High School---by far the most successful coach in the history of the universe.
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What us different about his approach? In part, jaw-dropping oomph. There is a standard drill in football where two option QBs get five yards apart and toss the ball back and forth from one side of the field to the other. Ladouceur dies it. So do all other option coaches.
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But at DLS, the QBs have to do it 10 laps and any laps where the ball hits the ground do not count. In other words 10 perfect laps of snit 110 yards each. That's oomph.
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So it us with winning national championships and other extreme high achievement.
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One of my assistant football coaches of a freshman high school team in 2003 was Alex Krychev, father of one of our players. He won the silver medal at the Munich Olympics in heavy class weight lifting for Bulgaria and later defected to the US. He told me one day that I reminded him of his Bulgarian weight lifting coach.
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I was floored by that. Jeez! I imagined the last thing a bunch of affluent California parents would want to coach their 14-year old sons was a facsimile of a Bulgarian weight-lifting coach. Sounds like something out of Rocky II. we did pretty well ending in a three-way tie for league champs and one if the other two teams was coached by John Madden's sons. Jihn was at the game where we defeated his son's team.
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Starman · Sep 1, 2022

Editing is your friend, hatboy

Smallpotatoes · Feb 5, 2023

Last week, McKeever was fired.

https://www.ocregister.com/2023/02/02/fired-swim-coach-teri-mckeever-preparing-to-sue-cal

DanOregon · Feb 5, 2023

I did find it interesting that the SoCal News Group uncovered it, considering they're owned by the same people who own BANG.

ChrisLong · Feb 5, 2023

DanOregon said: ↑

I did find it interesting that the SoCal News Group uncovered it, considering they're owned by the same people who own BANG.
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The OC Register's Scott Reid might be the only investigative reporter in the whole chain. He has been uncovering stuff like this for decades.
He usually covers the international competitions (Olympics, World Cup, etc.).

HanSenSE · Feb 7, 2023

ChrisLong said: ↑

The OC Register's Scott Reid might be the only investigative reporter in the whole chain. He has been uncovering stuff like this for decades.
He usually covers the international competitions (Olympics, World Cup, etc.).
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I think you're right. Elliott Almond had this as part of his job in San Jose, along with soccer, Olympics and surfing, but he's off the payroll now.

BTExpress · Feb 7, 2023

A little jarring to read a sentence like (parentheses are mine) "Tran (whose pronouns are they, them) said they were verbally abused and threatened..."

Wouldn't be as jarring if the story was singularly about Tran's experience, but since the bulk of the story talks about multiple players on multiple teams over more than a decade, your mind --- OK, my mind --- tends to read what "they" are describing as referring to multiple players.

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Amazing work uncovering abusive coaches

goalmouth Well-Known Member

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Amazing work uncovering abusive coaches

goalmouth Well-Known Member

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Smallpotatoes Well-Known Member

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