by rep » Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:58 pm
a carousel of coaches, a shortage of athletes, stupid parents that value playing seniors over better players because of someone really trying hard during their high school career should be valued more than talent....take your pick.
i think they were coached by jerry meyer in the 80s...he is in the nd sports hall of fame. needless to say, i don't think the coaches that have been there since are that calibur of coach.
heck was jamestown's best player this past season by far and he didn't start for much of the year. he was being wasted in junior varsity games. from the class a discussions i've seen on this board heck is viewed by the rest of the state as a quality player, so i'm not quite sure why the coach felt the need to not put the best players on the floor.
but you look across the board at jamestown athletics...football is down, hockey is down since they went to the east (we'll see what happens next year in the west), wrestling just doesn't have the numbers though they had some decent individuals this season, swimming is essentially a joke because they don't have the numbers to field a large enough team to compete with anyone...and in track and field and cross country, sam larson is one of, if not the state's most dominant force and on both the boys' and girls' team they have talent.
jamestown, to me, ends most of the debate about class a versus class b. good athletes are good athletes and bad ones are bad. jamestown has had a down cycle of poor athletics for about a decade and honestly, i see little to no reason to get excited about the future.
as far as i can tell, there is a pretty good population of jamestown that is really tired of the losing and clutches on to any sort of success it can find and tries to make it more than it actually is...look at this year's baseball team...it is a .500 team and nothing more and you would pretty much swear that is the best team they have seen in years (well, actually it is). but come on, a .500 team shouldn't be getting you visions of a state title...also, this year's baseball team was the culmination of most of the team playing three years of varsity ball. the program wasn't grown, it was essentially built for this season and this season alone and then the wheels fall off. great.
and numbers-wise...there are a couple of players on every team that probably shouldn't be playing. they could be average bench players, but they are forced onto the field/court because of a lack of numbers and then exploited. jamestown shouldn't have trouble fielding a friggin baseball team. a class b town/area...okay...i can kind of understand that. but jamestown shouldn't.
personally i blame the parents of the athletes. high school athletes are too taken care of by mom and dad. a coach can't get tough with a kid because mommy and daddy don't want the kids' feelings hurt. so essentially the kids never learn to really deal with losing (which they do a lot of) or then in the long run winning and that is a big chunk of what athetics are all about.
and for the good parents out there, i think that they are outnumbered at least three to one by parents that know little to nothing about the sport and once their kid is graduated will cease to care. when i played football in high school i sat down with my mother and taught her how to watch film. she got into it and it was something that helped create an appreciation for the sport that still exists today. she doesn't go to high school games anymore (she moved to a different town also) but she still follows what is going on at the different levels.
some kids need to work...and that is something that shouldn't be overlooked. a job has replaced extra curriculars. sad but true. all it does is damage kids as far i can tell. there is enough time to work later on in life. kids should be able to play games until they graduate high school.
i think that a coach like rollie greeno (who is basically the single greatest coach that jamestown has had) would have trouble coaching in jamestown now. and i think that it is pretty sad that in a town that is so starved for something positive to happen athletically, there is a good percentage of people that will make sure that never happens, so their little kid can play.
put dan carr on the sidelines of a blue jay basketball team...maybe the team could win, but athletics are a secondary thought (right or wrong, i'm not sure) from what i can tell for the school board and there really isn't a whole lot of concern to hire someone that could really make a difference.
of course, maybe next year suddenly the magic wand of success will touch one of the two water towers in jamestown and suddenly everyone will get athletic.
that is apparently the other line of thought in which athletes are born they aren't made. for basketball especially, i don't know if i would need two hands to count the amount of players that could make a left-handed layup (when they are right-handed). that is a basic fundamenal of the game that should be taught to the kid when they are seven or eight, not when they are seventeen or eighteen and i think that somewhere along the line, fundamentals are being forsaken for traveling team trophies.
maybe i'm wrong. i don't know. i think that someone like russ schmeichel has it right and it would be interesting to get his perspective on what is wrong with some of the other sports. if i had to guess he'd probably say the consistency of coaching and keeping the coaches around.
any other thoughts?
Last edited by rep on Mon Jul 17, 2006 8:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.