I thought I’d get to spend more time blogging this past week.
But fate had other plans.
Finally, I’m here to lay down some thoughts on the big story that’s taken hold lately: Should Jacksonville High have rehired head volleyball coach Paula Stewart after all that’s come to light since Wednesday’s special District 117 board meeting?
Personally, I don’t know. I am not a reporter feigning objectivity on this. I honestly don’t know. But here are some things I have learned in 10 years of covering Jacksonville High athletics, and volleyball in particular:
1. The parents are out of control. Not just at JHS, but everywhere. The current Crimson volleyball parents probably have legitimate reasons to be concerned about Stewart’s coaching style — but the mothers and fathers of former players helped bring this on. They helped drive out Shanon Keller and Chris Bourn, and they were a formidable distraction to Julie Manker in her year as head coach. I understand this is a whole different parent group, a different coach, and a unique set of concerns. Still, from the outside, one starts to wonder if any coach is good enough for these parents. Maybe District 117 should have been as unified behind its coach in 2004 as it is now. Then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.
2. Larry Sample is not coming back. The coach who oversaw the rise of the Crimson volleyball empire has been thwarted twice in his attempts to return and save it from collapse. Current board president Steve Todd tried to bring Sample back. Dr. Jim Bohan, another current board member, led the effort to keep Sample from returning, holding the then-athletic director to an unwritten directive that JHS administrators cannot be coaches. Now Sample is coaching at Chatham Glenwood, and last I heard, doing quite well.
3. The athletes must take responsibility for their success, or lack of it. On Saturday night, I spoke on the phone with Manker, the former head coach and one-time all-state player. She told me, quite frankly, that the work ethic in the volleyball program isn’t what it used to be. “The girls and their parents are waiting around for a coach to come along and make them better, instead of working to make themselves better,” Manker said. Maybe — just maybe — if there were enough girls in the JHS program who were willing to do whatever it took to sharpen their skills (practicing at home, playing year-round at the YMCA, enrolling in more skills camps), it wouldn’t matter so much who the coach is.
Of course, it matters who the coach is if that person is abusing the athletes in any way. Having read all the letters, having heard the outraged parents and having seen the tears in the eyes of current players who say they will not return to JHS volleyball if Stewart does, I’m certain there’s been an irreparable split between the coach and her players. For me, the question is, did Stewart aggressively provoke these rifts? Or did she react too belligerently, too emotionally, to the same crap that prior parent groups (and players) have been subjecting past volleyball coaches to?
Either way, Stewart’s evidently got some growing to do as a coach, and it looks like District 117 is giving her the chance to do that. If this year’s players revolt, quit the team or transfer out, and the program hits rock bottom, so be it — if that’s the price the district is willing to pay to get rowdy parents back in line.
If that’s so, then the district is also taking quite a risk. Because if the complaints against Stewart continue, or escalate, this coming fall, it’s all going to blow up in somebody’s face. The administration’s and the district’s credibility will suffer, and then … well, then, good luck ever getting those parents to stay in the bleachers.
