Stop coddling our children
Let them rise to the challenge
What lessons are we teaching our children? In a recent ruling, the CIAC’s football committee is telling our children that if you can’t compete, just wait long enough, complain a little and someone will change the rules.
The recent decision by the CIAC’s football committee to suspend coaches whose teams win by 50 points or more was disappointing enough. To see some of the coaches who voted for this rule was more stunning – Hand’s Steve Fillipone, St. Paul’s Jude Kelly and New Canaan’s Lou Marinelli. Winning by more than 50 points will violate the CIAC’s score management policy, resulting in a one-game suspension for the head coach.
These are men who have coached for years and have won state championships. They know the hard work that players do to get themselves ready to play and the teamwork involved to build a winning team.
This rule penalizes good teams and good athletes. It penalizes the coaches that prepare their teams. It penalizes kids who work hard all summer to earn a spot on a varsity roster. Will those second and third-string athletes get a chance to score when they play in the second half of a blowout game? No, they will have to take a knee, run out of bounds or purposely let the opposition score.
Let’s be blunt. Some teams in the state aren’t good. They don’t have enough athletes and/or quality coaching. This rule is insulting and demeaning to those teams and those athletes. It says that if can’t compete, we’ll pass a rule so your feelings aren’t hurt.
What happens in life? If things get tough, you need to adapt, learn new skills and take a new approach. You can’t wallow and try to legislate fairness into life because life isn’t fair.
Kelly didn’t wallow in self-pity when he went to St. Paul to a coach a three-team co-op with Goodwin Tech and Lewis Mills in 2005. A year earlier, the Falcons went 0-10 losing games by 40, 46, 48 and 49 points.
But Kelly, his coaches and his players accepted the challenge to improve, improvise and work hard. They lost their first three games and scored only 13 points but they kept their noses to the grindstone. It paid off with five wins in the last seven games.
Some coaches call this the Jack Cochran rule. His teams at Bloomfield, New Britain and New London have put up some huge wins. Many are jealous of his success. He replaces his starters in the second half with second and third-string players. Up big, he doesn’t throw the ball but he demands that they play hard all the time so they will score on offense and defense. Cochran opponents learned very quickly that they had to come to play all the time.
Up big, let the clock run all the time instead of stopping on incomplete passes, out of bounds plays and change of possession. Some say it deprives younger players of a chance to play but that is silly. That is what the junior varsity and freshmen games are for.
Coaches should not purposely run up the score. In a lopsided contest, keep the clock running in the second half and keep the ball on the ground. If a team can’t stop a running attack, well, then that’s too bad and they better get back to work.
No one likes getting beat by a big score. It’s annoying. It’s frustrating. It can be embarrassing. But that is the point. It is memorable and it can be an incentive to change.
We need to challenge our children, not coddle them. In the face of adversity and challenges, people, athletes and coaches will find a way to get better. Let’s give them that opportunity.
Gerry deSimas, Jr., is editor of Connecticut Sports Online and has been covering high school football in Connecticut for over 20 years.
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