SportsLetter

High school basketball is NOT life and death

A high school in Newport Beach, Calif., has suspended its boys' basketball program after the head coach and his family received threats of physical harm.

Newport Harbor High School head basketball coach Larry Hirst, described in the Orange County Register as "one of the nicest, most balanced coaches in county basketball," resigned as coach after receiving the threats.  Hirst had coached at Newport Harbor for more than 15 years and he and his wife also teach at the school.

From KABC News:

"He was very fearful for himself and for the safety of his family and ended up quitting as a result. So that's a very serious situation," said Newport Harbor High School principal Michael Vossen.

Vossen won't say exactly what threats were made but confirms something was left at the school, where Hirst's wife also works. There was also some vandalism at their home in Huntington Beach last week.

"I heard someone put sticky notes all over his wife's car, just saying 'Leave Harbor or bad things will happen,'" said student Brandon Beck. "They just hate the coach, they don't want the coach to be part of the program."

According to Vossen, police suspect those behind the threats are persons associated with the basketball program, which has about 30 to 40 students.

Police say an investigation is under way.

This past Januray Hirst took a leave of absence with his team in the middle of a 10-game losing streak, according to KABC, only recently returning to the team.  According to MaxPreps, the Sailors finished this season with league record of 2-8 and overall record of 6-17, giving them a 26-50 record over the last four years.

A straight right followed by a straight red

A high school soccer player in South Carolina is being charged with "simple assault" after she attacked an opposing player during a soccer game.

The assault, captured on video by CN2 News, shows Annette McCullough, a senior at Lewisville High School, falling to the ground after what referee Alan Parker called "incidental contact."   According to WCET.com:

[McCullough] then gets off the ground and punches a nearby Chester High school player.  The teen victim is then dragged to the ground by her hair, while McCullough continues to punch her in the face, the video shows.

The attack lasted around ten seconds before a woman is able to separate the two players. The video shows McCullough punching the victim at least eleven times.

A referee then escorts McCullough off the field.

Said referee Parker:

"Some incidental contact ended in one girl going down and she just got up and started pummeling ...It's unfortunate, it really is. Contact is a part of soccer, but when you retaliate like that, obviously, there is no place in the game for that."

The victim was not bleeding but did have several "swollen knots behind her right ear and a mark on her neck." 

The high school league will review the video with referees before handing down any additional punishment.

 

Lordy, what Rings

No, that isn't a championship ring returned by Reggie Bush.

Behold the rings recently given to the Southlake Carroll High School’s Class 5A Division I Texas state championship football team:

The knuckle dusters, first revealed on the school's official Twitter account, were designed by the captains of the football team less than a week after winning the state title, according to The Dallas Morning News.

From Yahoo Sports' High School Prep Rally:

With a central design that incorporates the school's USC-like logo, it also includes a whopping 40 white stones (diamonds or otherwise) in the central motif and eight, emerald-like green stones around the ring's border.

In a more traditional touch, the rings also showcase the school's Dragon mascot on its side panel. So at least the football players' jewelry will look a bit like their classmates' in that respect.

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The bigger question may be who decided it was a good idea for teenagers to be given jewelry with dozens of precious or semi-precious stones involved. Anyone who has seen a high school student wear their class rings knows that they often don't take them off, for anything.

Here's hoping that isn't the case for the Southlake Carroll players, at least if those gems are the stones that they appear to be.

U.S. State Department welcomes international girl cagers

Like it did last year in soccer, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, as part of its Empowering Women and Girls Through Sports Initiative, today announced that it will bring 18 teenage girl athletes and six female coaches from around the world to Washington, D.C. and Denver, the site of this year's NCAA Division I Women's Final Four.

From the State Department:

The exchange, in partnership with the NCAA, USA Basketball, and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), will enable the young athletes and coaches from Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Thailand, Tunisia, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe to participate in a variety of activities including: basketball clinics with their American counterparts, teambuilding exercises, workshops on Title IX and nutrition, and community events associated with the NCAA’s Women’s Final Four Championship.

Part of the Empowering Women and Girls Through Sports Initiative, this exchange builds on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vision of “smart power,” which embraces the full range of diplomatic tools – in this case the game of basketball – to bring people together to foster greater understanding.

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Sports Visitor programs give young people an opportunity to discover how success in athletics can be translated into the development of life skills and achievement in the classroom.

Protecting Georgia high school athletes from the heat

The Georgia High School Association has just become the fourth state athletic association in the past year to adapt or revise rules regarding school athletes practicing in heat and humidity according to an article in Education Week.

From Education Week:

The decision was at least partially in response to a recent study that found an average of three football players nationally dying from heat-related causes each year over the past 15 years, after averaging only roughly one per year before. Georgia led the nation with six heat-related deaths over that 15-year period.

Just last year, three youth-football players died due to heat-related causes all within a span of a week. Two of the three students attended high schools in Georgia, although one of the Georgia players died at a football camp in Lake City, Fla.

Now, in the first week of football practice, Georgia schools may not hold practices for longer than two hours, and players can only wear helmets and mouthpieces in that first week. After the first week, a player may practice in full pads, twice a day, only if he has gone through five conditioning practices wearing only a helmet and mouthpiece, and if the total practice time that day doesn't exceed five hours.

Any time a coach wishes to hold two preseason football practices in one day, he must provide at least a three-hour rest period for his athletes between each practice. Coaches are now banned from holding two-a-day practices on consecutive days, too.

In 2009 the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) released its "Preseason Heat-Acclimatization Guidelines for Secondary School Athletics." Over the past year the policies adopted by athletic associations in Connecticut, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas and now Georgia are based on the guidelines from NATA.

A tale of the tape

A small tech company has created a way to break down high school basketball game film into "some of the most advanced metrics that youth basketball has ever seen," according to a Wall Street Journal article.

Vasu Kulkarni, a 25-year-old "computer whiz and basketball junkie from Bangalore, India" founded Krossover, a company that will take game film of a high school team and its opponents and create a variety of statistical measures.

From the WSJ:

When the report comes back, often the morning after a game, coaches can click on a player's number and view video of every play he was involved in, as well as intimate measures of his performance that include a breakdown of where his assists were received: close to the rim, for instance, or in the paint or out near the three-point line.

For each unit of players, there is something called the pace of play, which is an estimate of how many possessions they'll have per game. Another statistic Krossover compiles is effective field-goal percentage (or eFG%), a weighted formula that adjusts for the difficulty of the shots taken.

All for a cool $2,000 a year.  Or less, if a coach doesn't want as much detailed information.  Still, quite an advantage for those schools that can spend that kind of money.

Will this obsession with stats trickle down to basketball below the high school level?  Not according to some:

To some people, telling high-school athletes that their "weighted assist-plus ratings" need work might border on overkill. Dan Gould, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports, cited academic studies that show adults can usually process about seven bits of information at one time, but kids may only be able to process four or five. "For a high-school coach it might work well, but for an 8-year-old, it's probably a little too much information," Gould said. "As the saying goes, you don't need an elephant gun to kill a mosquito."

It's the parents, stupid

Youth sports news out of Longview, Texas, this weekend was good as some 100 youth basketball and baseball teams visited the area for tournaments, reports KYTX News:

City leaders say it's one of the biggest sports weekends of the year, with more than 1,200 players competing.

"There's actually between 3 different tournaments, 112 teams here in Longview this weekend so that's a lot of players, [and] a lot of family," [City of Longview spokesperson Shawn] Hara said.

The city's parks and rec department expects this tournament weekend alone to bring in more than $1 million. City leaders say sports tourism as a whole is a growing part of Longview's local economy.

Meanwhile, a few hours down U.S. Route 79 in Bryan, parents were being removed from the stands at a boys middle school basketball tournament.

From TheEagle.com:

Bryan police were called twice to Rudder High School on Sunday after parents attending a boys middle school basketball tournament caused disturbances in the bleachers.

The exact details were unclear and police didn't write an official report. But tournament organizers eventually kicked all of the parents out of the gym and the kids then finished the tournament in front of empty stands, police said.

Well, maybe the parents spent some money at the local DQ while they waited for the games to end.

BAD DADS OF YOUTH SPORTS month continues

Last week a Michigan City, Ind., father was arrested for attacking his daughter's middle school assistant basketball coach because the coach had made the man's daughter run laps after practice.

As reported by WSBT:

During practice two players got into an argument and were punished by being made to run laps inside the gym.

When 37-year-old Shelly S. Miller, the father of one of those players, arrived at the school police say he was angered by his daughter's punishment so he approached assistant coach Jeffrey Yackus and punched him. Yackus was knocked to the ground and police say Miller climbed on top of him and continued punching him in the face and head, rendering him unconscious.

Allegedly Miller only stopped punching Yackus after St. Stanislaus School head basketball coach Robert Johnson pulled Miller off of his unconscious assistant.  Miller and his daughter immediately left the school and the injured Yackus was taken to the hospital.

According to WSBT the Miller "family is no longer affiliated with the parish or the school."

Miller was later arrested and charged with battery for the March 7th attack .  This past Monday he posted a $15,000 bond.

According to Yahoo Sports' Prep Rally and WSBT there are some in the community who justified Miller's attack.

From WSBT:

"Yeah, he hit a coach. [So what?]" said Wynter Goodwin. Her remarks were followed by several expletives and charges of racism.

Goodwin believes Miller has been disenfranchised. She compared his situation to other incidents in Michigan City. When WSBT'S John Paul asked how Miller's case was a racial issue when he was charged for punching the coach, Goodwin replied,"So what are you saying, he wasn't supposed to?"

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"If the coach is ******* with your kid, what are you to do?" said Goodwin. "You can't talk to him."  Goodwin said Miller went to the school "five times" to talk to the coach.

If there is a story behind Miller's attack on Yackus, Miller will have an opportunity to tell it when he appears in court on May 3.

Insert your own Mike Tyson joke here

A Springfield, Mass., parent has been charged with multiple offenses after being accused of punching the face of a Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) basketball coach and biting off part of the coach's ear.

From Masslive.com:

Timothy L. Forbes, a 34-year-old Springfield resident, is accused of biting off part of a winning CYO coach's ear after the team Forbes was rooting for lost a championship children's basketball game on Friday at Holy Name School on Alderman Street in the city's Forest Park neighborhood.

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As young players ranging in age from about 10 to 12 went onto the court to shake hands at the conclusion of Friday's game, Forbes struck the winning coach in the face and body with his fist, then bit off a piece of the man's left ear, Hampden Assistant District Attorney Marie Angers said.

Children were crying and knocked to the ground during the incident, according to Angers, who urged Springfield District Court Judge William J. Boyle to hold Forbes without bail.

Forbes has pleaded not guilty to charges of disorderly conduct, assault and battery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and mayhem, and will remain in jail until a hearing Friday determines whether he is "too dangerous to be released from custody."

The injured sixth-grade boys basketball coach underwent surgery to reattach his severed ear. 

All Mr. Forbes' son lost was a game.

Gives new meaning to the term "singles hitter"

A cash-strapped Little League has decided to turn down a $1,200 donation proffered by a local strip club.

Earlier this year the Lennox K-8 school district, near Los Angeles International Airport, informed Lennox Little League that rental fees for the use of school baseball fields had doubled and the league no longer would be allowed to sell hot dogs at games as a way to raise money. 

Fearing the loss of a season, the Little League was delighted when a local business wrote a check for $1,200 to help cover League costs -- until Little League President Roberto Aguirre learned that the check came from the nearby Jet Strip gentlemen's club.

From KTLA News:

"This morning we found out exactly where the check came from," Aguirre told KTLA Monday night. "It was a shocker to us."

According to Aguirre, the Lennox School District will return the check to the strip club, keeping baseball's image clean.

"We do not want the money from the strip club. I think, for us, we do need the money, but we will go some other avenue," Aguirre said.

Some parents weren't particularly bothered by the source of the financial help that would help guarantee a baseball season for their kids; and the Jet Strip manager told KTLA the donation simply was another example of the club's history of community involvement.

From KTLA:

Jet Strip's manager, who did not want to be identified, said the club is community and family-oriented.  He said that many of the people who work and go there have families of their own, and the club has been giving back to the community for years. The club has a family festival every year to raise money for school supplies for underage children. It also contributes to the local sheriff's deputies.

You see, it's all for the kids.