Veteran Observer-Reporter sports writer Mike Kovak offers his take on high school sports.
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Sunday, November 23, 2008
The "Fighting" Tigers
This story, from Sunday's Post-Gazette, showcases all that is wrong with high school sports and why I would never want to coach at the varsity level.
interested to here eyewitness accounts about what happened after the game. i for one rooted against b.f.'s all year for the sole reason of one player who thinks he is chad johnson.
i guess it was the coaches fault that a punt snap was high leading to the blocked punt. i forgot it was the coach who snapped the ball. i hate people like that, i hope that lady got arrested. maybe she should stay in the stands instead
Mike I feel the same way about coaching at the varsity level or any level below college for that matter. It just isn't worth it for the people that do it. Don't get me wrong, i'm thankful that we have some of these coaches that give so much to our kids for so little in return. I just think that you have to be half-crazy to want to expose yourself to these kinds of incidents. Unfortunately, society has allowed actions like those of the Thomas woman to be generally accepted and unpunished. I've seen these kinds of things happen from the times when kids first start playing sports (5 years old or so) all the way through high school graduation and it is sickening. I know we have had many problems in Peters over the years across all sports. Some of my friends over in the Canonsburg area have told me horror stories about some of their coaches getting abused by parents. Heck I can even think of 4 or 5 different atrocities from just peters in canon-mac in just the last calendar year.
Something needs to be done and quickly or else we are likely going to start seeing the Boston, Mass Crazy Hockey Parent label applied to all Western PA'ers. The people that are guilty of such behaviors should be ashamed!
I watched the game in the stands on the BF side. First and foremost, BF did not play their best game. Give Aliquippa credit, their defense played tough. Every punt snap was high the entire game, their punter did a tremendous job all day preventing punts from going over his head...unfortunately the last one cost them when he couldnt get it away.
But after the game you should have heard the fans..."we need to fire Matsook", "lets go get him in the parking lot", "this guy is awful"...it was an ugly scene. I felt bad for the guy...he leads his team to a 12-0 record and loses a hard fought game by 2 points and they want to hang him for it...
i agree clairton alum.. you go 12-0 and lose one game and now youre the worst coach ever?! im pretty sure the beavers falls program wasnt doing well before Matsook stepped in, and he turns it around so fire him?! wow
Out there, their measuring stick is WPIAL titles. If they do not win the WPIAL title, then the season for the most part was a failure. Parents need to shut their mouths and let the kids play. If they win good, if they don't then that is too bad. Both teams made it further than any other WPIAL team, and that is an achievement all in itself.
No matter what the mother says, this was about her "pitt recruit son" being more important than the others.I'm sure that she believes that If coach had given him the ball more they (HE) would have won. Parents who teach their kids to put the team first do their children a huge favor. And if those kids have charachter and talent they get plenty of individual reward in the process. Example Mike Hull.....a tremendous team first kid. Mom says in the paper that she is a brutally honest woman who speaks her mind. Since when does being honest also mean having no class at all.
I used to go every year to the WPIAL championship games. The most classless fans - those calling for the coach's head, berating players, etc. - came from Rochester and the other Beaver County schools. It wasn't even close.
Why in the world would Mike White even give this lady any press time. she was flat wrong for coming on the field in the first place and then to challenge a coach after such a heart breaking loss was way beyond her right as a parent/fan. The price of admission doesn't give her the right to assault a coach.
Brant Beaver County isn't all bad and I think you should have made that clear in your post. I understand that they have some over zealous fans, but the others counties in western pennsylvania have some had some pretty ugly fans too.
Mike K, have you ever been a witness to this type of behavior by a parent/fan towards a coach in any of your experiences covering high school sports over the year?
i had the "pleasure" of seeing the thomas's during the summer. when i told him he had made a nice catch of the football--- he said "yeh, i know" . instead of a simple "thanks". i agree with the earlier post about rooting against them all year due to one players arrogance.
I definitely have. I can remember an angry parent running at an entire team and screaming at them.
I've also witnessed some very tough fans voice their displeasure during and after games.
Heck, one time the Wash High girls were about to lose to Vincentian in the WPIAL championship game. A couple Prexies parents, not pleased with a story I did on Vincentian, started berating me toward the end of the game.
WBVP, in Beaver County, was about to go on the air and a chant of "Kovak sucks" broke out. It continued for a good minute. Somehow, the loss was my fault. Go figure.
Sorry to hear that was your experience with Beaver County fans. As someone who spent two years covering the sports beat there, I found Beaver County fans to be extremely intelligent about their teams and very supportive.
It wasn't a single incident, re Beaver County teams. It was year after year. But as always, a few bad apples in a group can make the entire fan base look bad. I don't mean to imply that all the Beaver County fans were idiots. They just seemed to have more than their share.
Todd Thomas is a great athlete. But there are plenty of kids at Pitt who will be just as talented as him.
I think its funny that Beaver Falls thinks they would have done better giving the ball more to Thomas tho he averaged 2.5 yards a carry in the WPIAL title game.
a bit late considering it appeared the next day... but anyone else read the follow up in the post gazette? it was just after the mike hull article... The parent's side
Jodie Thomas, the mother of Beaver Falls star Todd Thomas, said she had her reasons for going onto the field after the Class AA championship and getting into a confrontation with coach Ryan Matsook behind the Beaver Falls bench.
Thomas said security didn't stop her from going onto the field and she also saw Matsook's wife, mother and father on the field.
"Why are they allowed on the field and not me?" Thomas said.
Thomas said she also wanted to question Matsook about why he didn't kick a field goal at one point in the game and also about his play calling.
The incident turned ugly when Thomas was yelling at Matsook. Thomas said she didn't bump Matsook, but acknowledged the two may have inadvertently made contact.
"Was I in his face? Yes I was. I'm a brutally honest person, but I think he got upset that I did it in front of everyone," Thomas said.
"I didn't push him. Maybe I could've told him in a little bit of a nicer way. Basically what I said was on everyone's mind."
23 comments:
interested to here eyewitness accounts about what happened after the game. i for one rooted against b.f.'s all year for the sole reason of one player who thinks he is chad johnson.
i guess it was the coaches fault that a punt snap was high leading to the blocked punt. i forgot it was the coach who snapped the ball. i hate people like that, i hope that lady got arrested. maybe she should stay in the stands instead
Outrageous... I wonder if she will get in Wannstedt's face next year?
Mike I feel the same way about coaching at the varsity level or any level below college for that matter. It just isn't worth it for the people that do it. Don't get me wrong, i'm thankful that we have some of these coaches that give so much to our kids for so little in return. I just think that you have to be half-crazy to want to expose yourself to these kinds of incidents. Unfortunately, society has allowed actions like those of the Thomas woman to be generally accepted and unpunished. I've seen these kinds of things happen from the times when kids first start playing sports (5 years old or so) all the way through high school graduation and it is sickening. I know we have had many problems in Peters over the years across all sports. Some of my friends over in the Canonsburg area have told me horror stories about some of their coaches getting abused by parents. Heck I can even think of 4 or 5 different atrocities from just peters in canon-mac in just the last calendar year.
Something needs to be done and quickly or else we are likely going to start seeing the Boston, Mass Crazy Hockey Parent label applied to all Western PA'ers. The people that are guilty of such behaviors should be ashamed!
The Wannstache will smush her with either his super bowl ring or his national championship ring.
I watched the game in the stands on the BF side. First and foremost, BF did not play their best game. Give Aliquippa credit, their defense played tough. Every punt snap was high the entire game, their punter did a tremendous job all day preventing punts from going over his head...unfortunately the last one cost them when he couldnt get it away.
But after the game you should have heard the fans..."we need to fire Matsook", "lets go get him in the parking lot", "this guy is awful"...it was an ugly scene. I felt bad for the guy...he leads his team to a 12-0 record and loses a hard fought game by 2 points and they want to hang him for it...
When people who have failed in some way in their own lives try to live vicariously through the achievements of children, that is what happens.
i agree clairton alum.. you go 12-0 and lose one game and now youre the worst coach ever?! im pretty sure the beavers falls program wasnt doing well before Matsook stepped in, and he turns it around so fire him?! wow
Out there, their measuring stick is WPIAL titles. If they do not win the WPIAL title, then the season for the most part was a failure. Parents need to shut their mouths and let the kids play. If they win good, if they don't then that is too bad. Both teams made it further than any other WPIAL team, and that is an achievement all in itself.
No matter what the mother says, this was about her "pitt recruit son" being more important than the others.I'm sure that she believes that If coach had given him the ball more they (HE) would have won.
Parents who teach their kids to put the team first do their children a huge favor. And if those kids have charachter and talent they get plenty of individual reward in the process.
Example Mike Hull.....a tremendous team first kid.
Mom says in the paper that she is a brutally honest woman who speaks her mind. Since when does being honest also mean having no class at all.
I used to go every year to the WPIAL championship games. The most classless fans - those calling for the coach's head, berating players, etc. - came from Rochester and the other Beaver County schools. It wasn't even close.
Why in the world would Mike White even give this lady any press time. she was flat wrong for coming on the field in the first place and then to challenge a coach after such a heart breaking loss was way beyond her right as a parent/fan. The price of admission doesn't give her the right to assault a coach.
Brant Beaver County isn't all bad and I think you should have made that clear in your post. I understand that they have some over zealous fans, but the others counties in western pennsylvania have some had some pretty ugly fans too.
Mike K, have you ever been a witness to this type of behavior by a parent/fan towards a coach in any of your experiences covering high school sports over the year?
i had the "pleasure" of seeing the thomas's during the summer. when i told him he had made a nice catch of the football--- he said "yeh, i know" . instead of a simple "thanks". i agree with the earlier post about rooting against them all year due to one players arrogance.
I definitely have. I can remember an angry parent running at an entire team and screaming at them.
I've also witnessed some very tough fans voice their displeasure during and after games.
Heck, one time the Wash High girls were about to lose to Vincentian in the WPIAL championship game. A couple Prexies parents, not pleased with a story I did on Vincentian, started berating me toward the end of the game.
WBVP, in Beaver County, was about to go on the air and a chant of "Kovak sucks" broke out. It continued for a good minute. Somehow, the loss was my fault. Go figure.
"Why in the world would Mike White even give this lady any press time."
Two sides to every story. As journalists, our job is to tell both sides.
Brant,
Sorry to hear that was your experience with Beaver County fans. As someone who spent two years covering the sports beat there, I found Beaver County fans to be extremely intelligent about their teams and very supportive.
It wasn't a single incident, re Beaver County teams. It was year after year. But as always, a few bad apples in a group can make the entire fan base look bad. I don't mean to imply that all the Beaver County fans were idiots. They just seemed to have more than their share.
Todd Thomas is a great athlete. But there are plenty of kids at Pitt who will be just as talented as him.
I think its funny that Beaver Falls thinks they would have done better giving the ball more to Thomas tho he averaged 2.5 yards a carry in the WPIAL title game.
a bit late considering it appeared the next day... but anyone else read the follow up in the post gazette? it was just after the mike hull article...
The parent's side
Jodie Thomas, the mother of Beaver Falls star Todd Thomas, said she had her reasons for going onto the field after the Class AA championship and getting into a confrontation with coach Ryan Matsook behind the Beaver Falls bench.
Thomas said security didn't stop her from going onto the field and she also saw Matsook's wife, mother and father on the field.
"Why are they allowed on the field and not me?" Thomas said.
Thomas said she also wanted to question Matsook about why he didn't kick a field goal at one point in the game and also about his play calling.
The incident turned ugly when Thomas was yelling at Matsook. Thomas said she didn't bump Matsook, but acknowledged the two may have inadvertently made contact.
"Was I in his face? Yes I was. I'm a brutally honest person, but I think he got upset that I did it in front of everyone," Thomas said.
"I didn't push him. Maybe I could've told him in a little bit of a nicer way. Basically what I said was on everyone's mind."
Ridiculous...
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