Did you hear about the high school basketball coach who was fired after his team won 100-0? I didn't realize until just this morning that Lincoln Southeast's girls basketball team has put up similar numbers: 92-8, 97-18, 87-19. Yet I haven't heard anybody call for coach John Larson's head. I wonder why?
Make no mistake, I'm not calling for coach Larson to be fired, or even punished. I liked the guy as a person back when I was in high school, and I have no reason to think he's out to humiliate anyone. Everything I have ever heard suggests he's a stand-up guy. Moreover, I have been a sports official for over fifteen years now and I have been a part of some of the worst blowouts you will ever see. I have only once heard a losing coach accuse the winning team of "running up the score" in one of those games (in a little kids' game). The losing team isn't happy, sure, but they seem to recognize both that their opponent is that much more skilled, and that asking their opponent to completely shut down would be more embarrassing than a lopsided score.
Maybe folks around here understand all of that, thus preventing any fury. Or maybe it's simple ignorance; perhaps people don't know about these scores, due in large part to local media keeping such blowouts relatively subdued in their coverage.
With regard to high school sports I wouldn't mind seeing some mercy rules enacted. Soccer could definitely use a "running clock' rule for large score differentials. (Even if the clock were to run the entire second half, that's still 40 minutes of discomfort.) Basketball could use a rule. Many baseball and softball leagues have mercy rules, but I don't know if any are used in high school matches. I was thinking that football might have some sort of "running clock" rule but I may have imagined it.
Would you do anything to address blowouts in high school sports?
Just for fun: I have been a participant in blowouts with the losing team, the winning team, and as an official. One of the worst maulings came in a soccer scrimmage against Capital City Gold. The coach wanted to experiment with players in different positions. I somehow ended up in goal. I was terrible. I gave up seven goals in something like 15 minutes. Now, in all fairness our defense did a crappy job by letting them get off that many shots. Still, I proved that day that I am no goalkeeper. Yikes.
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Jon Larson is a terrific guy and coach. I hadn’t realized that he was clobbering opponents that bad.
I haven’t followed this story at all, but it was being discussed last week at NNN (link) and here is some context that commenters provided:
I think the publicity behind the 100-0 blowout was the fact that one team scored 100 and the other scored none. I suppose there isn’t anything wrong with winning by that scoreline, but if I remember correctly, one or more assistant coaches were cheering for their team to get to 100 points. They were shooting (and, apparently, making) three-pointers in order to get to the century mark. THAT is not exactly good sportsmanship. The coach was fired because of how he handled the media around the blowout, not for the blowout itself.
I, too, have been on the giving and receiving end of blowouts. In soccer, I lost count after the 7th or 8th goal, so it didn’t really matter to me if they scored more. It’s not like the question of who was the better team had yet to be answered.
Good example of how misinformation gets spread on message boards. The team on the losing end most definitely was not a “special needs” school. I saw some of the team members interviewed on TV. If they were from a special needs school, then I guess, so was I. They were from a Catholic school playing in an all-Catholic-school league. From the comments their coach made, their emphasis isn’t so much on winning, nor even teaching fundamentals, but more on having fun. Which is fine, but then folks shouldn’t seem shocked at a 100-0 pasting.
From the comments of the kids on the losing team, they sure didn’t seem to be, nor did they even seem to mind. One of the kids interviewed said something like, “Wow! They were so much bigger and better than us. They were just playing hard.”
I like what some states do - start the clock running continuously once there is a X point lead, where X = 30 or 40 or so. No asking kids to quit when they’re ahead, but also acknowledging that the outcome seems inevitable.
The guy in Texas, beating a team from a school with 20 students, 8 on the team, all with learning disorders, and who haven’t won a game in 5 years….
there’s a special place in hell for those kinds. Maybe he’ll meet Woody Hays (2-point conversion with a 42-14 lead), Billy Tubbs(“If they don’t like it, they should get better” after beating American International in hoops 173-101) and Lou Holtz(fake punt with ND leading 54-7 against Boston College)
From the Dallas Academy web site:
“Our Mission: Dallas Academy restores the promise of full academic enrichment to students with learning differences. Our staff establishes a meaningful connection with each student to overcome barriers to success.
Dallas Academy offers a structured multisensory program for students with diagnosed learning differences in grades 3-12.”
i.e. not “special needs” as in retardation, but learning disorders.
http://www.dallas-academy.com/page.asp?iframe=about_us_overview.asp
I wasn’t even aware of this score until someone in my family mentioned it. I thought she was nuts because I didn’t see it in the paper, and I’m usually pretty good about the sports page.
So, after looking through the old papers ... sure enough it was on page 4, halfway down buried in small print. Not even a headline, but a small summary.
My hats off to the LJS staff for that one. I have a feeling (hopefully correct) that they had no intent of making it into a big deal.
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