One of the craziest high school sports stories I've read....

Parent Cafe
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<p>Parents complained to the school district after their daughters were cut from the JV volleyball team, and after the school’s principal backed the well-respected, longtime coach. The school district caved to the complaints, and informed the coach that new tryouts were to be held, with new teams being decided by coaches from other, competing schools!! The entire coaching staff (rightly) quit in protest. What in the world?! From the article:</p>

<p>Tesoro girls volleyball coach Rich Polk and his entire staff resigned Thursday, leaving the program and its season in limbo.</p>

<p>Polk, the Register’s Orange County Coach of the Year in 2012, informed the team’s players of his resignation following a controversy over the selection of players for the junior varsity team.</p>

<p>Bruce Bates, who has been involved with the girls volleyball program at Tesoro for several years, said Polk was upset that Capistrano Unified School District officials asked him to hold another set of tryouts after parents confronted the district, angry about their daughters being cut from the junior varsity team.</p>

<p>Bates said district officials told Polk that other volleyball coaches from the district would conduct the tryout and would select the rosters for the varsity, junior varsity and two freshmen squads.</p>

<p>It was then that Polk resigned. Bates said in an act of solidarity, the rest of his staff resigned as well.</p>

<p>“Everybody is devastated,” said Bates. “But I think on behalf of himself and every other coach in the district, he had to take a stand.”</p>

<p>The resignations put a hold on the Titans’ season as they are currently with a coach. Tesoro had to forfeit a match Thursday against Mission Viejo and will likely forfeit upcoming matches against Woodbridge (Tuesday) and Beckman (Thursday).</p>

<p>The program’s freshman tournament scheduled for this weekend was canceled.</p>

<p>“The view from many parents is that this could cause a slippery slope situation,” said Bates. “What happens if a parent is not happy that their son was not named the starting quarterback? It’s a very dangerous precedent to set.”</p>

<p>Polk, Tesoro High and district officials were not available for comment.</p>

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<p>The administration should be ashamed to have caved by the unreasonable parents. It is good that the entire coaching staff showed solidarity in all resigning–who can work under such conditions? That’s really very unreasonable that parents should interfere in decisions about their special snowflake being cut from a sports team. Unless there is some very specific allegation that there was favoritism or bias that isn’t in your post and much more to this story, this sounds like a pretty bad situation. I have never heard of opposing coaching staffs being able to audition and choose a team for another team. That’s totally absurd!</p>

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<p>I have no knowledge of this particular situation. I do know that school volleyball coaches often also coach club volleyball teams. And that there are many parents who believe, rightly or wrongly, that the girls who are part of that coach’s club team are given preference in school tryouts. I imagine it happens more often than anyone would like to admit. Or the parents are being unreasonable. But there’s more to this story than a parent or two one season being upset, I guarantee.</p>

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<p>Recently, it seems as though whenever I think an article is surely from The Onion, it isn’t.</p>

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<p>Yes, sports do have “favorite” players in pretty much all sports that my kids have participated in. Folks understand it, but it doesn’t make sense that the district should wade into this minefield and have coaches from other teams audition and field the team that is to be their opponent. How is that a logical solution? This just sounds like a mess and I am glad my kids are not a part of it. I don’t imagine that the girls that were on the team would welcome having to audition all over again, losing their coaching staff, and forfeiting a host of games and can’t imagine that there will be much harmony in any resulting team. I would not want my kids to be on this team for this year, personally.</p>

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<p>These parents need to get a life.</p>

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<p>lol…imagine…the coaches from the teams you will be PLAYING AGAINST will pick YOUR team…lol </p>

<p>This is why so many folks question the intelligence of those in public K-12 administration.</p>

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<p>m2ck, don’t think the questioning is limited to PUBLIC–plenty of poor decisions in PRIVATE schools too, including the school my kiddos attended and we paid tuition for. ;)</p>

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<p>^^
Yes, but you can vote with your pocketbook.</p>

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<p>Yes, but there are a lot of implications in moving kids from one school to another. I have moved my kids more than they and I would have liked. I have no regrets, but moving a child from one school to another is not a decision to make lightly, espcially after she or he has established a peer group and ESPECIALLY not in the middle of the year or when your child will be the ONLY new kid in that grade level. As a practical matter, moving a student is the “nuclear” option and not to be lightly considered.</p>

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<p>There is something to be said for no cut programs. Don’t cut anyone from JV, just don’t play the lesser players much. They will self cut by quitting or just not coming back out the next year.</p>

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<p>I love cross country. Everyone runs. Seven fastest kids are varsity. Numbers don’t lie! And everyone cheers on EVERYBODY, no matter what team they’re on.</p>

<p>Each year, several kids from soccer “defect” to the cross country team. Often, one of them becomes the #1 runner on the team!</p>

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<p>Paddling and judo also took anyone who wanted to participate. If you weren’t one of the best, you might not be in many of the competitive races, but you could be part of the team with everyone else, practicing and attending the races.</p>

<p>Our kids didn’t do well with cross country–it took way more stamina than they had. S did try but it made him physically ill, so he had to give it up. D didn’t try, after watching how badly it affected S’s health.</p>

<p>When S was in 6th grade, all the boys could be on the school basketball team. The 1st string played the most but they didn’t cut anyone and the kids seemed to have a nice time. S’s goal was to be in the 2nd string, so there was no pressure and he could at least get some time in the game, relieving the 1st string that REALLY wanted to do well.</p>

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<p>Yes, XC is great. One son was cut from soccer, moved to XC, and immediately moved onto the starting 7 varsity runners. The next year he recruited a couple of other very fast bench warmers to join him. They won two state championships during his four years on the XC team. </p>

<p>He would have been a bench warmer on a mediocre soccer team. He ended up having a great deal of success in both XC and track. </p>

<p>Sometimes being cut from a team is the best thing that could have happened, but the kid and the parents have to be able to embrace that point of view. </p>

<p>No cuts JV or freshmen teams are also great, because they allow for development of kids who may never have played the sport. And kids do self cut from those teams.</p>

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<p>@eastcoascrazy, your son’s team sounds like my son’s!</p>

<p>My older son was a “star” - made varsity all 12 seasons of running in high school, ran in national races in NYC, and was on an XC team that won the Junior Olympic championship one year. My middle child was three years younger and was a freshman on the team when his brother was a senior. He was just the opposite of his brother - very slow (like me!). One time, he was literally the LAST finisher. But he stuck it out and I was so proud of him! His teammates all cheered for him every week. My daughter is in between the two of them. She COULD be fast, but she enjoys the social aspect of the team more than anything else. She will probably make varsity this year, as a junior, but she won’t be near the top of the team.</p>

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<p>The girl who didn’t make it was a freshman, who didn’t play club ball. Didn’t even play volleyball before. She liked to play (that should be enough right??) ha. Daddy asked the coach why? how could this be? The coach said she didn’t meet the minimum requirements, to fill the open seats- offered dad some advice on how he can work with his daughter to get her to tryout again (drills, practice, club ball, etc).</p>

<p>So daddy’s little girl didn’t make the team, and every kid gets a medal so he ran to the district and complained. Without a vote, the one woman daddy spoke to said “well that’s not fair” - hearing only one side and told the school to relay to the coach he would be re-holding tryouts. </p>

<p>Rather than teaching his daughter to try again, daddy would prefer to bully her spot on. So now with this panel the district will select, what happens if the girl still doesn’t make it? Who can he bully then? For those saying don’t have a cut program. That’s ridiculous. What are you teaching your children?? Remember when you trained and played to win? Guess what, maybe your kid just isn’t as good as you think they are. Put your big girl panties on and teach your kids that there’s life after a cut and show them how. </p>

<p>#1 the district should never been involved; #2 Tesoro’s administration should have told the district to back down. This puts every single Capistrano Unified School District coach at risk, and probably teachers for that matter. Coaches don’t get paid that much at this level to deal with this crap. Coach Polk is an accredited coach, with over 20 years of experience behind him. He’ll be sought after. But what coach would actually take the position as coach there knowing it’s simply a title, the lady at the school district really has the overall say. </p>

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<p>This is the perfect example of a parent who hasn’t a clue about the bad things he’s teaching his special snowflake. </p>

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<p>I would bet that snowflake isn’t very popular in her school right now. In attempting to pave her way, Dad just made life much harder for her.</p>

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<p>Another thing is that the parents are PAYING for the kids to play. California has no money for athletics so everyone has to pay to play. When my daughters were going to play for another school in this district, the fees for lacrosse were $900 (EACH!) for the season, so I assume these players are paying north of $500 (the 6 big high schools in the district are pretty much the same in how they treat athletics). I would not have paid that if my kids were on a no-cut team where they’d never play in a game. The teams have to pay for transportation, so just bringing kids along who don’t play still costs money.</p>

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<p>Yes, so many times well-meaning folks don’t understand the harm they do by their actions. There will be a lot of collateral damage from this district’s short-sighted actions. </p>