I doubt that the coach was a total clown. He's had some very successful teams. In fact, the kid told me about an incident that seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back and I thought the coach was technically in the right in that particular instance. I'm only going from what the kid told me and what I've heard but I think it was simply a kid who had become very successful doing it his own way and a coach who was trying to exert authority who was telling him he couldn't keep doing what was working so well. The kid is extremely intelligent and had developed himself into a top talent through hard work and dedication to a program he believed in and wasn't going to change. The coach kept using the "my way or the highway" ploy and the kid called his bluff.
To be honest I can't fault the coach or the kid in this particular situation. I just wanted to bring out the point that we tend to make some overly strong assumptions about kids and coaches based on our personal biases. I'm certainly as guilty of that as the next person.