I have to wonder - especially when first the letters, then the telephone calls and now the e-mails start to increase at dramatic numbers.
They’re coming from parents, many of them angry, as well as students, alumni, friends of families - and even students.
Here’s why?
People are ticked, and so am I, that coaches of school teams tend to only want to focus on their teams when they - win. Otherwise, shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone. Like, it’s a bad thing to lose a game - a high school game.
What irks me even more than teachers and coaches standing in the way of promoting the accomplishments of young people, is when they lie about a final score.
Teachers and coaches change it from 19-0 to 5-0 in a baseball game because the lopsided score looks bad when it appears in a paper or announced on radio.
Here’s another one: adjust the score in a soccer game from 19-0, yes a soccer game, to 6-0. Or, like just the other day, a school in Peel Region defeated another school by more than 100 points in a girls’ rugby game. Even shut out the team too.
What’s going on?
People wonder why 99 per cent of the mainstream media in Toronto have little interest in high school school sports. A few reasons: inconsistent reporting of scores, false reporting of results and even failure to get the names right of those who score points.
Now, let’s not point the finger at all teachers and coaches. There are some who care - and even when they lose, call us with scores. They do an excellent job looking for opportunities to single out athletes and go out of their way to help them learn the sport, how to excel and get along with people.
But there aren’t enough. Like many other people, I can see why students pick and choose what schools they want to attend - and what coaches they want to learn from as part of their education in the school classroom. And, that means the school classroom on the field, the rink, the gym and the pool.
They still do have pools, right?
