Earlier today, I wrote my thoughts about the Oscoda Area High School football team and how their coach shut their season down after going 0-4 and not scoring a single point. I may have to revise my opinion of the situation. My thoughts were boiled down to:
Let the kids play, as long as you can get enough of them out there to field a team. Sports build character and help the kids continue to lead a healthy lifestyle after school.
I have since heard an interview with their head coach, Kyle Tobin, on the radio. I may have to adjust my stance a bit in this particular case. According to the coach, he did not arbitrarily cancel the season. He approached his athletic director, the superintendant, the school board, and eventually the school’s law firm with his concerns and it was decided collectively to cancel the season. The reasoning was that only a few of the kids did the training over the summer to get ready for the season, none of them had very much if any experience, and they had already had one game that they had to postpone in order to get medical clearance for enough players to put on the field.
In this case, it does seem as though perhaps the right thing to do was to cancel the season. Sports are still important, but you can not go straight into competition with no base and barely enough players. The kids apparently could not protect one another and were blowing assignments, and already had a half dozen to a dozen kids injured. And that is just for the kids that show up to practice and to games. Tobin had told the kids in the spring what would be expected of them, and only a few followed through.
Assuming that everything that Kyle Tobin said in the interview was true, then he made the right decision. He seemed very convincing to me, and until I have actually seen some of the film or heard anything to the contrary I am going to have to revise my stance. This just goes to show that I can not be right all the time, I suppose…
Another good example of why forming a hasty opinion is not a good thing. I am GUILTY! 🙂
As a member of the Board of Education in Oscoda, the only member to oppose the coaches decision, the decision was suggested by the coach, and made by the superintendent and the AD, no communication with the board of education till after the decision was made and told to the kids. The attorney’s opinion was sought after the fact and was regarding parents taking over the football program and the liaibility there in. Did Mr. Tobin in his interview mention that in 1991 he did the same thing, cancelled the Varsity season at another school, while he was 0-4 at the time?
His reasons for cancelling that season were echoed sometime word for word this year.
He talks a good story but dig a little in to his background and story unfolds.
Thanks for stopping by, Mark. He did not mention in the interview that he had done this in the past. All I know about this story is what I heard on the radio and then later the interview with Tobin. I have not dug into it any deeper than that.