BillLindau

Coaches behaving badly

Coaches behaving badly

Submitted but unpublished
By Bill Lindau
Special to The Pilot
Everybody loves it when two ballclubs hammer it out on a playing field. It doesn't do anybody any good when two people involved in the game butt heads off the field.
Recently a coach at a game I was covering refused to comment to me after the game. His team had just won by a huge shutout and if I were that coach, I'd be shouting my joy from the rooftops.
But immediately after the game, when the opposing players and coaches shook hands, I said, "Good game, coach," to Coach E------. He responded by giving me a dead-fish stare, and veered away from me.
I attempted to ask several of Coach E-----'s players about the game. E------ whistled at them to get into the post-game huddle. The game took place on his home field, so they weren't in any hurry to catch a bus.
At that point, I decided that while a comment from the winning coach would've been nice, I didn't have time to try him again, only to have him snub me again. Anyway, I already had the essential details of the game, including the post-game comments from the other coach, the coach on my beat, so I decided I might as well head back to my office.
I don't know what I did, if anything, to make E----- mad at me, but it wasn't due to anything that happened at this particular game. E----- had been boycotting me for more than a year and a half. And he has never told me the reason why.
All I know is, one spring I was covering a baseball game he was coaching. I had just met him several months ago, when he was coaching another sport, and we got along pretty well. I thought we were even going to be friends. Well, close to the end of that game I got inside E-----'s team's dugout.
He promptly asked me to leave.
As soon as the game was over, I started to go over the stats with the youth who had the scorebook. I heard somebody call out, "Don't let him see that scorebook." Then Coach E----- told the statistician to come over to the side of the field where he was going to talk to the team.
I waited for 15 minutes while E----- talked to the team. Then a police officer who'd been staffing the game approached me and said, "The coach said to tell you he's going to be talking to his players a long time. He'll talk to you Monday."
Now here's the rat I smelled: The game took place on Easter weekend. The schools were closed that Monday. Coach E----- had just moved into the county and his home number wasn't in the phone book yet.
The other rat: Just as I was getting into my car, Coach E------ let his players go.
That's when I realized the coach was snubbing me. I wrote up the game that night with all the information I had and wrote a note to my editor telling what happened.
I called Coach E-----'s school. No answer. So he wasn't planning to come in and work on his own. Tuesday: Not there. The school was closed all week. I tried to reach him when the school reopened. "He's not here," the receptionist says every time I call for him and she has me give my name.
That does it. I spend the rest of the season getting the stats from the other team, keeping my own stats or lifting them from a regional metropolitan daily, putting a makeshift report in my own words. I'd get the story one way or another.
E----- is a good coach. He is into his second year coaching the football team, but it is amazing he should treat me this way, for so long, and not have the guts to tell me what I allegedly did to him. I saw a few rookie mistakes on my part in the reports on his ball games, but I have remained on friendly terms with other coaches after much, much, much worse things than that.
It's really sad that an educated person in his late 40s should carry on like a pouty child.
My job didn't suffer that badly, however. My editor was starting to get me out of sports, and doing more front-page news.
What's more, that wasn't the first time a coach has given me the silent treatment.
Coach D----, from another town, guided his football team to five state championships. During one of these seasons, D---- got sore at the newspaper for which I was writing. He later said it wasn't anything I did that made him so mad, it was something that didn't have anything to do with sports.
I became quite an expert at keeping statistics. I also learned how to keep stats and take photos in a pouring rain. And how to keep your notebooks and pen and ink dry.
The next week, my managing editor wrote a column about the incident, and about the time he himself ended up in the doghouse. I have chosen not to mention names in this commentary. It made Coach D---- even madder. "The paper is trying to turn the entire community against me," D---- said later. He said neither he nor his assistant coaches would not talk to me, and I would have to keep my own stats.
And I did.
He left after that year, but came back and won two more state championships. But a few years later, D---- got sore at the newspaper for something involving academics. It didn't last long; both the principal and the athletic director told him to cease and desist.
He ceased and desisted. His football season ended when his opponents in the state playoffs eliminated D----'s team. D---- quit the following summer. That was the last anybody saw of him.
Coaches who won't cooperate with newspaper are only shooting themselves in the foot. It doesn't accomplish anything to treat the press like dirt. It doesn't help the college prospects on the coach's team, the game coverage is poorer, and besides, the fans knew about the boycott and thought D---- had gone too far.
You may think the newspapers are too liberal for your taste, but you can't really get anywhere with these antics. Coaches who do this kind of bush league stuff are only hurting themselves.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 6:47 PM