Coach regrets bad behavior - with a camera rolling

I found this interesting. The men's basketball coach at D-III Holy Family in Philadelphia shoves (perhaps "assaults" is the better word) one of his own players during a workout. The incident is captured on videotape and the coach is suspended.

Somehow, the coach and player end up as guests on Good Morning America. They are sitting next to one another at a table as a host asks the coach whether he wishes to apologize to the player and the player whether he is able to forgive the coach. It is an odd moment and I will not give away the ending.

Suffice to say the coach expresses regret for his actions. It seems to me he most regrets that the tape of this incident has gone viral.

I have known high school and college coaches who were severe with their players - in my judgment, overly so. I could respect them because it seemed to me that they remained in control. The stern treatment was a calculation on their part, a prod with a purpose. At times a particular rant might seem over the top to me. I could see the reasoning even if I disagreed with it.

This is different. It seems to me that John O'Connor just lost his head. Or mind.

Thanks Dave Tracey.

A contender for "Youth Sports Quote of the Year"

This is definitely in the running for the most inspired youth sports line of 2009. It comes from an article about a woman just taking over as coach of a boys' high school basketball team in Minnesota. Women coaching men's teams at any level is highly unusual. And the job picture for women seeking to coach women's teams isn't even that great. Surprisingly, less than half of women's teams at the college level are led by women.

Kelly Anderson, coach of the Ulen-Hitterdal High School boys' team in Ulen, Minnesota, was speaking with the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead about her first months on the job. And she said this:

“When I first got up here, one student said basketball was ‘a man’s game,’ So I played him one-on-one, even though I was five or six months pregnant at the time. Let’s just say it hasn’t been a problem since.”

Thanks Nicole LaVoi

"This is a brain and a head we're talking about"

The most effective public-service announcement I've seen on kids, sports and concussions.

More info at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A sixth-grader with a basketball future - or not

In today's New York Times, Adam Himmelsbach writes about the inexact and arguably destructive practice of national rankings of sixth-grade basketball players. There are a number of rating services in the business of evaluating players this young. It is a business, and apparently a profitable one, as parents, coaches and, no doubt, the kids being written about subscribe to these services. Not surprisingly, there seems little attention paid to the effect on the children being heralded.

These two paragraphs from Himmelsbach's piece address the issue squarely:

"The players can stop improving, stop caring or stop growing. They can become irrelevant as college prospects before they reach high school, raising questions of whether they should be rated at all.

“To rank a boy at that age sets up a dynamic of possible failure,” said Dr. Ellen Braaten, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. “I think it’s a tremendous amount of pressure to put on a child. Some are resilient, but there’s definitely the potential for others to develop depression or anxiety disorders.”

There doesn't seem to be any turning back on turning sixth-grade kids into miniature pros. Or reason to hope that next year the bar won't be lowered to fifth grade.