Another Article in the Wash Post on Parents vs Coaches

wow, very sad for the kids. they usually get the short end of the stick in these things. no winners here.

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When I got to "We need to get the ballot box stuffed -- Chicago style -- These ballots will hold up." I knew which side I'd be on.

This school district has a huge problem and the parents and all of the the taxpayers, need to take their district back. And it all starts with electing honest, competent, and motivated school board members.

Without a board that is willing to roll up their sleeves and tackle this sorry mess then the rightly agitated parents are just howling into the starry night.

The administration is totally weak kneed and some of the staff and coaches are corrupt, arrogant, and drunk with power. And they're roughing up the parents with the parents' own money...tax dollars!

This may offer some insight...from the Chicago Tribune. Watch the video embedded in the editorial.

Regardless of your political bent, be involved. Without honest oversight we, the people, will not be served well.



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Anyone who lives in Northern Virginia, knows that TC Williams is one of the most political and it appears corrupt districts. You guys know this school - "Remember the Titans" movie. They are an entity unto itself. I think they actually had an AD that used to be the mayor of Alexandria. How weird is that? Sounds like they have a mess on their hands, and I'll bet you if you dig deeper, this is systemic across all their sports.

With close to 3500 students to choose from, they cannot seem to dominate the region. Cutting a Junior for political reasons and everyone on-board with it is why they will continue to make headlines in the Washington Post for the wrong reasons.

No school is perfect, but this is just sad, sad for this girl that had nothing to do with being a political pawn.

whatever happened to students play coaches coaches and parents watched.

quote:

Originally posted by Will:
whatever happened to students play coaches coaches and parents watched.

That's SO old fashioned! :-)

In keeping with the upcoming Christmas season, it is a "Wonderful Life" when

Coaches Coach
Players Play and
Parents Praise!

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"No school is perfect..."

Agreed. And no Athletic Director is perfect, and no coach is perfect , and no parent is perfect, and no student is perfect, and no athlete is perfect!

Welcome to the HSBBW greenmonstah.
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"Whatever happened to students play coaches coaches and parents watched."

This still exists. But when ballot boxes get stuffed, by either side, then that's when things have to change. Good people must step up and put a stop to it. Corruption, even in Crook Co. Illinois, is not tolerable.
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"That's SO old fashioned! :-)"

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it is a "Wonderful Life'...

...was filmed in 1946. I'm good with that!


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Thanks for the Christmas greeting dad43...we should all remember the reason for the season!




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Sounds like the Coaches embezzle the administrators endorse it, the parents are held hostage or their kids get cut.

Whew!

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"6-4-3 double play"...you nailed it!



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Just curious, as to why this girl's mother chose a boarding school that will force her to attend an extra year of high school. They don't mention what state it's in.

Does Virginia have limits for number of seasons a student may play? Will this girl have to sit out her senior year?

I am a student at TC Williams, and just to clear things up, this isn't the whole story. The coach saw the student in question at a basketball game when she was "sick", and the coach clearly took that to mean she was just skipping tryouts. In response to greenmonstah's post-

quote:

I think they actually had an AD that used to be the mayor of Alexandria. How weird is that?

Not weird at all. The former mayor had kids who went to TC and was already involved in TC sports, and when the athletic director position was available, he decided to apply for it, and ended up being the most qualified. I am not sure why that would be weird.

quote:

Sounds like they have a mess on their hands, and I'll bet you if you dig deeper, this is systemic across all their sports.

Why? This is two coaches from one program. I dont understand why you would think that Alexandria is corrupt. Making assumptions based on one isolated incident is ridiculous. I am sure that schools all over the country have similar incidents, but because ours was in The Post,
we are the only ones who are at fault.

quote:

With close to 3500 students to choose from, they cannot seem to dominate the region.

A large portion of our student body comes from countries where they dont play football or baseball. We cut 1 kid from our baseball team this year. Roughly half of our JV football players dress for varsity, and our roster is still smaller than many schools. We just dont have the partcipation to jusitfy regional domination. And the sport where we do have large participation- basketball- we do dominate the region.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by anotherplayerforteam:
I am a student at TC Williams, and just to clear things up, this isn't the whole story. The coach saw the student in question at a basketball game when she was "sick", and the coach clearly took that to mean she was just skipping tryouts. In response to greenmonstah's post-


I bet if this kid parents made a sizable donation to the school,they would have looked the other way.

Look, the facts are that the coaches were involved in "stuffing the ballot box". To excuse this, which the administration seemed to want to do is a tell-tale sign of corruption. No ifs, ands, or buts. No excuses.

Now that you say the AD had kids going to the school, I wonder if those kids got scholarships? I would be interested to find that out. Why would a politician want to be an AD? still weird.

Dub-L-Play-
TC is a public school. Im not sure if you mean scholarships to the school or to college, but I'm pretty sure that one of his daughters ended up getting a crew scholarship. We only have one public high school in Alexandria, and is in many ways a part of the town. That would explain the ex- mayor's allegiance to the high school. Somewhere, if you search TC Williams on washingtonpost.com, you will find the article written about "Titan Pride". I also think that it is hard to truly understand both sides of the story without actually talking to the AD. Look at how much he is quoted, and how much the mother is quoted. Not quite fair.

quote:

Originally posted by Vicarious Dad: Does Virginia have limits for number of seasons a student may play? Will this girl have to sit out her senior year?

anotherplayerforteam, can you answer this question?

quote:

anotherplayerforteam, can you answer this question?

I honestly have no idea.

I will read it. But fair or not, the facts are what they are. Coaches scheming to oust kids, parents etc from programs with the full knowledge and consent of the AD, Principal and the School Board is deplorable.

Good to know the Mayor/AD can get his kid a Crew Scholarship. All I can say is WOW.

You seem to be supportive of your school which is great, but turning a blind eye to corruption will not advance anyone. And you are sadly correct that this kind of stuff goes on all over. So sad for the athletes who are political pawns in a demented power struggle.

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"Look, the facts are that the coaches were involved in "stuffing the ballot box". To excuse this, which the administration seemed to want to do is a tell-tale sign of corruption. No ifs, ands, or buts. No excuses."

Bingo!




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quote:

Originally posted by anotherplayerforteam:
Im not sure if you mean scholarships to the school or to college, but I'm pretty sure that one of his daughters ended up getting a crew scholarship. .

I think that makes my point. This school appears to be corrupt. Is the AD still there? If it walks like a duck...

quote:

Originally posted by Vicarious Dad: Does Virginia have limits for number of seasons a student may play? Will this girl have to sit out her senior year?

it happens all the time around here with private schools. new england is the prep school capital of the US. at 35k + they want you as long as they can. they do allow one year of prep also. but these schools don't fall under our state athletic board.

Same here in Pennsylvania. As a 14 year-old sophomore (October birthday), my son had to block 19 year-old seniors when they played one of these preps.

Greenmonstah- please explain to me why because a girl from one of the top crew teams in the state gets a scholarship, it means the school is corrupt. I dont see how corruption in a school system would extend to a major DI college. And if she got a scholarship because of her dad, that is called CONNECTIONS, not corruption.

I would also like to extend a warm welcome to hitenrun, who has emerged from the cracks of HSBBW to bash TC Williams and our athletic program once again.

As soon as I read the "stuffing the ballot box", I also knew which side I would take.
This reminds me of when a few of us parents took over the booster club after sons second year, it had been run by the same individual for many years (his son had graduated), we were quite surprised to find out that, with all the money we had given and all of the fundraising that the bank account was in the red, blood red. He fought us regarding stepping down. A long time friend of the coach, the coach kept quiet. No accusations, but the parents of current players decided that they wanted control over the funds we raised.
The end of that first season we were in the red with plenty of money for start up the following season. We also took away things that the past president did, like printing up our yearly yearbbok, so no one had their hand in paying themselves for anything.
I do beleive that coaches should have no input in running booster clubs, let him/her tell the parents what he/she needs, and concentrate on his/her job, which is coaching.

Kid, you need to open your eyes. You seem unwilling to face facts. I assume the Dad's motivation for being an AD was to use his position to get his kid a scholarship. I also assume that this guy is no longer the AD because he got what he wanted to out of the job. You see, he really didn't give a sheet about the school, or anything else.

That my dear boy, happens, when the system is corrupt. Can your Dad get a job as the AD?

I mean I support my kids and school, but I would not be able to get an AD position so my boys can get their scholarships. Look Fairfax County has it's fair share of political issues, but TC is well known to have a mess and this article shows just how deep it is.

He actually stepped down to run for political office, although that never materialized. Even if he did use his position to get his daughter a scholarship, he was a more than competent athletic director, turning around the TC athletic program in almost all sports. I would like to see another example other than a biased article and a shaky inference that shows ACPS is corrupt.

Ahh, and doesn't every AD step down to run for office?

I'm not going to argue with you about your school being corrupt. It is well known that it is extremely political and with politics comes corruption. The AD thought it was ok to stuff a ballot box. He did nothing to stop Coaches threatening parents. The principal seem to think ignoring embezzlement was ok. Nuff said.

Sadly, I really don't care about TC Williams enough to continue an argument with a High School Student.

quote:

Originally posted by TPM:
I do beleive that coaches should have no input in running booster clubs

How do you feel about booster clubs getting coaches fired? Seems like Mrs. Gordon, the treasurer, got the ball rolling, at TC Williams.

I think Mrs. Gordon is clearly overly involved. But, from the article, it looks like someone was making a money grab and she was the steward.

Why are coaches even allowed to be a part of a fundraising entity, is a better question. I think these individual Booster clubs are trouble. We have one unified booster club and the money gets divided based on what we raise respectively.

I didn't see anything in the article that said the money was mis-appropriated. Yes, $15,000 is a lot of cash for any HS booster club, but it's not unusual (around here) for money to be used to supplement what the school district pays the coach and his/her staff.

greenmonstah,, where I live, it's all individual booster clubs. Each sport has their own, and they do as they please. For some, it's raising money for trips. Others raise money to hire the coaches they want.

quote:

Originally posted by Vicarious Dad:

How do you feel about booster clubs getting coaches fired? Seems like Mrs. Gordon, the treasurer, got the ball rolling, at TC Williams.

I understand this happens, booster clubs sometimes don't care for how coaches run their teams and want him out, I stand by the coach in that instance, that has nothing to do with putting your hand in the till when it is intended for the betterment of any program. There is a moral issue involved. If you read, the coach wanted moeny for a freshman team not even affiliated with school, what's with that?

We had a group of parents who didn't care for our HS coach, they routinely went to the AD because they didn't like how the coach coached, I stayed out of that, the officers of the club never even discussed with the AD what may have gone on, there was nothing to prove, we got no slack from the coach for taking over and everyone moved forward. We changed lots of things, new checking account with two required signatures was the first. Gordon was right, if the booster club is a business you have to treat it as such.

I come back to why were the coaches so concerned about what Gordon was requiring if not for the fact that they had ill intentions all along? I mean why would coaches be resentful of someone trying to get it right? Why penalize the kid? This is just a bad system and corrupt school.

From my take on it, I don't think Gordon looked for their resignations until after she received the mistaken email. It does not appear that she was setting up the funds to fire the coaches, in fact it appears that she was simply an overly zealous treasurer, looking to cross the t's and dot the i's.

Furthermore what is most disturbing about the entire article is the complete lack of action by the AD and Principal. A kid was hurt in the process, the parent was made out to be the vilen and the AD still says that the one Coach "left on his own" only when forced did the other coach get relieved of duty. As if that is something to be proud of. He didn't even have the balz to fire him after all was said and done.

Just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

One thing about Alexandria is people here complain about EVERYTHING. Parents whose children don't get ample playing time (in their view) voice it, and often not in , person- to- person ways (i.e. hitenrun's whole thread about our school's baseball coach). The boy's lacrosse coach had been pegged in the past for not being completely truthful in his business dealings. But guess what? It was to help the lacrosse program, not to stuff his own pockets. The freshman lacrosse team is so kids who have never played the sport before can become exposed to it, because the majority of kids who play youth lacrosse in the City of Alexandria go to private school. Both the freshman and JV teams have kids who pick up a stick for the first time at the first week of tryouts. Ms. Gordon obviously had her own agenda because her daughter had played on JV the past year. She also threatened to sue the school (which I do not believe is mentioned in the article) because her daughter didn't make the team. Personally, if I were a coach, and a prospective player lied to my face about being sick, I'd cut them too. The fact that her mom is a pain in the behind probably didn't help either.

Ya know, kid, you have a lot of answers for just a kid that goes to the school. I am having doubts about whether or not you are a kid. Or maybe you're a kid who needs to keep his nose out of what is going on behind the scenes. (Remember - players = play (nothing more). You are obviously a baseball kid, so why all the interest and knowledge in the LAX Team? If you are this involved as a kid, you were probably one of the kids harassing this poor girl.

I've been around long enough to know what's what. I think you have an excuse for everything incident that occurs in this school. I have read your posts and everyone seems to be at fault except the school, which is a very interesting position to take as a kid.

My son knows nothing about the inner workings of the boosters, politics of the school etc. You however, have all the answers.

Makes you think.

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"The fact that her mom is a pain in the behind probably didn't help either."

The fact that the ballot box was going to be stuffed probably didn't help either.




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I am a kid, and do not know anything about the inner workings of the boosters either. I do know about the politics of the school because we are constantly attacked by people such as Ms. Gordon who are willing to make matters more about their pride than their children's or school's. I know kids on the lacrosse teams, and when this happened last year, it was a pretty big deal. People generally wonder what happens when their coach is put on leave in the middle of the season. I only am showing the side of the story that the AD would have taken if he had been interviewed fairly. It is unfair to say that our AD and Principal are corrupt solely based on one article. They were both brought in two years ago and have made nothing but positive advances. I do not necessarily always take the side of the school, however, I will always side against overly- involved parents. If I seem quick to defend the school, I am sorry. It is only because overly- involved parents such as Ms. Gordon have almost ruined both our baseball and football programs, and already ruined our lacrosse program. You are right- all players should do is play- but all parents should do is sit back and watch, which is something parents in Alexandria hate to do.

Perhaps there is reason the parents are involved? Have you ever considered that? I have found that where there is smoke, there is fire. The mere fact that your administrators choose not to look into this is a Big RED Flag.

You act as though Alexandria VA is the only place where parents intrude... News Flash, it is not. But to have evidence of stuffing ballot boxes, nasty emails about punching parents, cutting Jrs, certainly gives credence to the "overly concerned parents". It practically validates every concern they have.

As a kid you should not even be concerned about what the parents do - It is NONE of your business. Just like I don't really care what drills you run on the field or what the line up is. You are doing exactly what you have accused these parents of doing - sticking your nose in something that has nothing whatsoever to do with you playing baseball.

Ms. Gordon strikes me as someone I am glad I do not know -- and dub-L-play, I don't know you and I don't like to make judgements, but the worst thing a school program can encounter is a meddlesome parent. Sports programs are best when parents simply cannot intrude. It is seldom the case when a truly talented player is cut.

The kid you are arguing with makes much more sense to me. At least from afar.

Our administrators did deal with it. Both the coaches are gone, and the fact that they didn't want to embarass already embarassed coaches says good things about their character. You are right in that crazy parents are everywhere. But few use the Freedom of Information Act to get coaches fired. And even fewer use HSBBW to attempt to get coaches fired. Also, you continue to refer to one incident as the standard. All I am trying to say, and have been trying to say, is that this isn't indicative of our school. I Am most definitely not sticking my nose in anything, I just really hate it when things are said about TC that really aren't true. And I guaruntee most other titans feel the same way.

dub-L-play, you offer this kid some great advice:

quote:

You are doing exactly what you have accused these parents of doing - sticking your nose in something that has nothing whatsoever to do with you playing baseball.

One of my children chides me for getting involved when I feel it necessary. Because we are at an extremely corrupt school, (see some of my prior posts), she believes that if I speak out on something that I know to be wrong, then I jeopardize her playing time, or even her membership on the team at all. She is correct. Sadly. And usually, the students know only a small portion of what is really going on. And that is how it should be. They really don't need to know, or shouldn't know, everything.

The "booster club" at our school is truly misnamed. It really is a political action committee--and a few years ago, has (illegally) donated $15,000 to a political campaign. That is, the booster club took funds donated by parents and businesses to support the athletic programs at the school and used the money to fund political campaigns. Not really what the money was intended for, and no doubt, if those who donated knew what their hard-earned money was to be used for, they would not have donated it to the boosters.

If you are involved with schools where the the administration and athletic department operate ethically and with integrity, and treat the student-athletes and their families with fairness and respect, then you are truly blessed and yes, lucky. Unfortunately, not all of us are. And often the corruption is so deep and has been going on for so long, that it is extremely difficult to not only change, but to get anyone to listen to the complaints, let alone take them seriously. After all, it's the way it's always been done. But yes, sometimes the complaints are valid and must be dealt with. The short-term solution may be to transfer or move, but it is not easily done, especially with our current economic situation. Besides, that doesn't fix the problem, it just enables the corruption to continue.

Play Baseball,

From your accounting of your booster clubs and school, Are you really from Crook County