Pay-to-Play Sport at Private HS employing club coach - what's normal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with unseating these coaches is that their entire professional and financial existence is now grafted on to the school. For them, there is almost no dividing line between the school and their business. That's why these baseball players were run out of the program - what's one player's development versus your entire business model?

If all the scandals at educational institutions over the last 10 years have taught us anything, it's that the institution protects itself at almost all costs. Only when the liability and reputational risk of allowing sports programs to be run this way outweigh the desire to win will something be done.

I think this is a great post, but I'm puzzled as to what St. John's motivation is for supporting the baseball coach(es) involved given that the kids they are forcing out of the program seem to be top D1 recruits. If so, this policy would presumably hurt, rather than help, the competitiveness of the team. Is it that the coaches bring in more potential St. John's students, who know that if they sign up for Diamond Skills or the coaches' other camps they will be guaranteed a spot on the baseball team at St. Johns if they decide to go there?

And are St. John alums loyal to the coaches? Last year, there was a long thread on the lacrosse forum about Bullis firing their long time, successful lacrosse coach for dubious reasons: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/740121.page In the end, alumni and community outrage prompted the school to rehire him (or pretend they hadn't tried to fire him in the first place--it was a very strange story).

SJC baseball alum here. Short answer - no. Not loyal to coach. Would love to see him gone. Don’t know why they stand by him. None of my teammates liked or respected him.

Thanks for the response. Does St. John’s have a strong alumni network that stays involved with the school? If so, and your experience is a common one, it seems like a group that could pressure the school into making some changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with unseating these coaches is that their entire professional and financial existence is now grafted on to the school. For them, there is almost no dividing line between the school and their business. That's why these baseball players were run out of the program - what's one player's development versus your entire business model?

If all the scandals at educational institutions over the last 10 years have taught us anything, it's that the institution protects itself at almost all costs. Only when the liability and reputational risk of allowing sports programs to be run this way outweigh the desire to win will something be done.

I think this is a great post, but I'm puzzled as to what St. John's motivation is for supporting the baseball coach(es) involved given that the kids they are forcing out of the program seem to be top D1 recruits. If so, this policy would presumably hurt, rather than help, the competitiveness of the team. Is it that the coaches bring in more potential St. John's students, who know that if they sign up for Diamond Skills or the coaches' other camps they will be guaranteed a spot on the baseball team at St. Johns if they decide to go there?

And are St. John alums loyal to the coaches? Last year, there was a long thread on the lacrosse forum about Bullis firing their long time, successful lacrosse coach for dubious reasons: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/740121.page In the end, alumni and community outrage prompted the school to rehire him (or pretend they hadn't tried to fire him in the first place--it was a very strange story).

Coach's Dad and brother (both also coaches) are a huge part of the alumni network along with the head coach and have ties everywhere. He has been protected by this and by winning WCAC championships. When people leave (other good players, draft picks even, have left for the same reasons) the family puts out the word that the kids weren't St. John's kids, weren't loyal, didn't want to work. That is why so many of us stay silent. There is no point in speaking up.
SJC baseball alum here. Short answer - no. Not loyal to coach. Would love to see him gone. Don’t know why they stand by him. None of my teammates liked or respected him.

Thanks for the response. Does St. John’s have a strong alumni network that stays involved with the school? If so, and your experience is a common one, it seems like a group that could pressure the school into making some changes.

[Anonymous]

Sorry. Response accidentally embedded. See below as a response to why many alumni haven't bothered at least with St. John's baseball:

Coach's Dad and brother (both also coaches) are a huge part of the alumni network along with the head coach and have ties everywhere. He has been protected by this and by winning WCAC championships. When people leave (other good players, draft picks even, have left for the same reasons) the family puts out the word that the kids weren't St. John's kids, weren't loyal, didn't want to work. That is why so many of us stay silent. There is no point in speaking up.


Adding one more thought. What they do may have worked in the past and may have been great for some players. But it does not work any more and does not work for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry. Response accidentally embedded. See below as a response to why many alumni haven't bothered at least with St. John's baseball:

Coach's Dad and brother (both also coaches) are a huge part of the alumni network along with the head coach and have ties everywhere. He has been protected by this and by winning WCAC championships. When people leave (other good players, draft picks even, have left for the same reasons) the family puts out the word that the kids weren't St. John's kids, weren't loyal, didn't want to work. That is why so many of us stay silent. There is no point in speaking up.


Adding one more thought. What they do may have worked in the past and may have been great for some players. But it does not work any more and does not work for everyone.

What do u mean by this? Are u talking about what the coaches do?

[Anonymous]

College recruitment for baseball has changed. Keeping everyone together year round may have worked 10 years ago, maybe even 5 years ago, especially when high school mattered more with colleges. But now it hurts the players more than it helps them. During the high school season, it should be 100% about the high school team. In the summer, players should be able to find a team that fits best with their ability and that fits with where they want to end up playing in college. They should be allowed to go to the camps, tournaments and showcases that make the most sense for their goals. Top caliber players have the opportunity to play for national teams that play against top competition. You might have a solid player with a 4.0+ GPA who should be targeting a completely different set of colleges. Or a D3 player who should be playing in specific tournaments for top academic schools. And there are some kids who don't want to play in college at all who should be allowed to get a summer job. There is no way one coach can do that for all 50 plus players in his program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:College recruitment for baseball has changed. Keeping everyone together year round may have worked 10 years ago, maybe even 5 years ago, especially when high school mattered more with colleges. But now it hurts the players more than it helps them. During the high school season, it should be 100% about the high school team. In the summer, players should be able to find a team that fits best with their ability and that fits with where they want to end up playing in college. They should be allowed to go to the camps, tournaments and showcases that make the most sense for their goals. Top caliber players have the opportunity to play for national teams that play against top competition. You might have a solid player with a 4.0+ GPA who should be targeting a completely different set of colleges. Or a D3 player who should be playing in specific tournaments for top academic schools. And there are some kids who don't want to play in college at all who should be allowed to get a summer job. There is no way one coach can do that for all 50 plus players in his program.

This is spot on. Doing things the way St Johns is doing it benefits only the coach. The kids suffer. High school coaches who don’t put the kids first should not be allowed to keep their jobs. Period.

[Anonymous]

Maybe I am naïve, but it seems this kind of makes sense. High school baseball coaches can’t make very much money. Isn’t this a way for the school to have a good baseball coach around, and receive additional compensation by operating these outside programs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I am naïve, but it seems this kind of makes sense. High school baseball coaches can’t make very much money. Isn’t this a way for the school to have a good baseball coach around, and receive additional compensation by operating these outside programs?

Yep, this is used as a recruiting incentive. If not the case good luck attracting top coaches that would make Kevin Plank to add another comma or zero to his donation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I am naïve, but it seems this kind of makes sense. High school baseball coaches can’t make very much money. Isn’t this a way for the school to have a good baseball coach around, and receive additional compensation by operating these outside programs?

Yes. But HS coaches should not require that players play for their travel program.

[Anonymous]

On a different but related note ... Apparently there was near violence between the SJC and DeMatha football teams IN the parking lot AFTER the game at SJC last Saturday. DCPD was summoned. This is Exhibit B that sportsmanship, fair play, and the true merits of sport have been overshadowed at these and other local schools. Exhibit A is the behavior complained about in this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But what do players actually get from being on a high school team? Cant a really good player just play for a travel team/club? Would he have equal chances for colleges?

For baseball, I don't think there are good options for playing during the primary season if a player is not playing for the school team. So not playing on the school team teams not playing in the spring -- whether the kid just wants to play at this age or is hoping to play in college. (Although if people know of spring baseball options for high schoolers, I would love to hear about them.)

Rockville Baseball has a spring program for high school players, 18U.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son plays a HS fall sport at a DC private. It's a team sport. The school does well athletically but had not recently in this sport.

The school decided to bring in a new coach a couple years ago who also runs his own club team. He’s not a coach at large local club, but he has his own company running his own club. After joining the school, the coach set up his own club to basically operate out of the school, with camps, practices, games, and even cook outs held at the school. Just about every photo on his company’s website is clearly taken at the school’s facilities.
As time has progressed, more and more players from his club team have enrolled in the HS, usually as freshman. Every year a new crop of freshman show up (about 4), and they are placed on the Varsity team and given starting roles. The coach uses the school team communication system to constantly advertise his camps and club, and the message to everyone seems to be if you want to play on the school's team, you need to be a paying customer of his club team.

The problem is – probably two thirds of the players don’t have an association with his club. Which leaves 2/3 of the boys riding the bench while his club players take most of the game time. (Some of his club players are good and should be on the field. Some are no better or worse than the Juniors and Seniors his players are bumping off the field.) The coach also seems to actively segregate his club players from the rest of the team – scrimmaging them against each other, talking to them separately, giving their parents special attention, etc. I’ve also heard about the coach soliciting players from opposing schools to join his club team after games. All of this has led players to quit the team, and even to a couple of transfers out of the school. On the sidelines, the parents have segregated themselves as well, between families associated with his club team and those that are not.

My question is this – is this common? Am I naïve in expecting a school to not allow a circumstance like this to develop or persist? Is this just the way it is, and I should just deal with it, or is it worth raising as an issue? This has been going on long enough that I know that other parents have complained, but nothing has changed over the last couple of years.

This movie replays every other year. This is one reason you see at some of the more "elite" private schools in the area that the coaches are almost always teachers, whose real job is to teach and help the kids grow into young adults. When schools go outside of the teaching corps and do not think through these issues, they end up with a mess.

Hear, hear on coaches being teachers. My son is at Gonzaga and it makes an enormous difference to have Gonzaga teachers as coaches throughout the athletic program. They are truly invested in these kids and in the school community.

The former baseball coach had, and continues to, his own travel program. I don't suspect he required his players to play with the Eagles but Gonzaga, unlike O'Connell, is not immune from this phenomenon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I am naïve, but it seems this kind of makes sense. High school baseball coaches can’t make very much money. Isn’t this a way for the school to have a good baseball coach around, and receive additional compensation by operating these outside programs?

This is not that situation. The baseball coach at SJC is also the Director of Development. A quick search on line shows that a job like that in DC probably pays six figures. That's a lot better than your typical teacher/coach makes. I've also heard he does a lot more coaching than fundraising and the Director position is really just an excuse to pay him more money. So to answer your question, the figurehead job is the way they keep the coach around. And to qualify your statement, "good baseball coach" isn't entirely accurate. SJC wins more than anyone else because they have more talented players and more resources. It ain't the coaching. I can't explain why SJC keeps him around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I am naïve, but it seems this kind of makes sense. High school baseball coaches can’t make very much money. Isn’t this a way for the school to have a good baseball coach around, and receive additional compensation by operating these outside programs?

Yep, this is used as a recruiting incentive. If not the case good luck attracting top coaches that would make Kevin Plank to add another comma or zero to his donation.

As a PP said, the Gibbs coaching tree was around a long time before Kevin Plank and UA came on the scene, so I doubt Gibbs is still around to appease Plank. I think the money Plank has given St Johns has mostly supported the football and basketball programs. Football travels all over the US and gives full scholarships to top players. The basketball facility apparently is getting a full multimillion dollar makeover. Those sports are where the money is for UA. I don't live inside Plank's head but I bet he couldn't care less about the baseball program, even its traditionally the most successful program there.

[Anonymous]

Maret girls tennis coach does the same thing I've heard.