Now, this could make for an wrongful termination lawsuit. Micah Grimes, the coach of Covenant School of Dallas, was reportedly fired after refusing to apologize for a 100 – 0 victory of his girls’ basketball team over Dallas Academy. He insists that it is ridiculous to apologize “for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity.” He was fired shortly thereafter.
Covenant, a Christian school, was mortified by the success of its girls. Kyle Queal, head of school, and board chair Todd Doshier signed a statement that “It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christlike and honorable approach to competition.”
Dallas Academy only has 20 girls in its high school and is winless over the last four seasons. The school includes students with “learning differences,” such as short attention spans or dyslexia.
For the full story, click here.
Im curious to know what you think coach grimes should have done from a basketball coaching stand point.
Exactly, but coach grimes is the only one who lost his job.
I think its funny how you cant disagree with someone with out name calling or trying to belittle someone because of a difference of opinion. You are on here acting as if you are the moral authority, yet you are calling me a neo-con and a jackass. Seems to me that that is a little hypocritical.
chris:
I very much agree that both school administrations have things to be embarrassed about, not the least of which is their failure to anticipate and mitigate this train wreck.
I enjoy speaking to people like you mespo. If the learning disabilities these children had in any way affected their ability to play basketball then it is the responsibility of those children’s parents and their coach to make sure they are not put in a position to be humiliated. I dont disagree with you that these blow outs are outrageous, but the common denominator in all the blow outs is the administration of dallas academy for continuing to put those girls on the court. Coach Grimes was a scape goat, and only after this gained national attention.
LindyLou:
Brava LindyLou. Both of my kids are good athletes and played on winning and championship teams in several sports. Neither would run the score up on an opponent, and no one who coached them would do it either. I am aghast at these (and there is no other word) jackasses who can’t restrain their macho urges to totally humiliate an opponent, but for whom there would be no one to play. And what honor is there in thrashing an over-matched team? I blame the parents of Covenant’s players as well as the coach for letting this get out of hand. They should have told the school administrators they would not let their kids play for such a creep. Alas, it’s hard to be rational when you’re living out your sports fantasies through your kid.
“A parent who attended the game said Covenant continued to make 3-pointers — even in the fourth quarter. She praised the Covenant players but said spectators and an assistant coach were cheering wildly as their team edged closer to 100 points.”
And some people above are actually calling this honorable?
I’m reminded of the time I took my handicapped son to the grocery store, and the little high school baggers were making fun of my son in their cloaked high school language, thinking we adults had no idea what they were saying. Then one of these hotshot baggers took our groceries out to the car, and he regaled us with how he was the football hero of Kempsville High. I told him I had never had my groceries wheeled out by an actual hero before. My sarcasm was lost on him. This pimply faced little teenaged stud actually believed he was a hero because his team had won a football game. Good Lord.
To me he was a ridiculously self-important, overblown jackass with a pathetic ego problem who was openly mean and cruel, and he thought he was fooling people when in fact we could see right through him. I wonder what kind of hard knocks he ended up receiving once that big ego deflated out in the “real world.”
So Covenant won points. They and their cheering crowd are very proud of this accomplishment.
But they lost being compassionate. They lost the opportunity to rise above their egos. They lost an opportunity to be inclusionary rather than purely competitive, and to show the world that as Christians they put a higher value on things of the spirit rather than things of this world.
Covenant lost bigger things than the game.
Chris:
“I also read your reply to Fudd. I know that that is a complete lie. If you substituted your guards for tailbacks you would have been penalized because there are number restrictions on people who play those positions.”
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By the way Chris, there is something called changing jerseys. Complicated and clever I know, but we figured out how to do it without any help from a neo-con. We also had breakaway number vests which are held together with Velcro which also we used. Your state of sports knowledge is just incredible.
chris:
“If you did even an ounce of research you would see that blow outs like this have occurred quite frequently to dallas academy.”
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And they are all despicable. I wonder about the emotional maturity of people like you who find nothing wrong with humiliating children with special needs. Maybe it’s rage or some deep-seeded psychological need to prove who is the stronger. Whatever the reason for this emotional handicap, it’s all too common among the neo-con crowd and likewise despicable. And that hero worship of some ruthless coach is even more incredible. You are right about one thing though, the School should have acted faster. Apologies were in order that evening, and those AD’s should have to answer some tough questions too. Like klf and King Canute you can rail against the tide until your heart’s (assuming you have one) content, but the tide pays you no mind.
you’re
Cats! How come my coffee isn’t brewed! I knew I should have gotten them thumbs for Xmas.
Chris,
So your saying that Grimes behavior, unsportsmanlike by definition and unrepentantly un-Christian values being displayed by an employee of a Christian school, is the fault of the opposing coach or excused by technical restrictions on tailbacks?
Hm. Blame the victim and irrelevant technicalities.
Where have I seen that before?
cough cough cough Neocons cough cough
This line of reasoning is a dead end and does nothing but expose you as a hypocrite and/or an equivocator. Feel free to pursue, but good luck with that.
I also read your reply to Fudd. I know that that is a complete lie. If you substituted your guards for tailbacks you would have been penalized because there are number restrictions on people who play those positions. Not to mention that any real competitor would be more humiliated by taking it easy on them and turning the game into a circus rather than just finishing the game while both teams play as hard as they can.
I highly doubt you have a clue what you are talking about mespo. This showed a complete lack of a backbone by this school. Not to mention they didnt apologize to the other school until after the article was written by barry zorn. Seems like if they were really sorry they would have apologized the next day. I believe every word coach grimes said in defending himself and think he has become a scapegoat. Maybe the coach of his other team should have been fired for even putting these girls on the court. If you did even an ounce of research you would see that blow outs like this have occurred quite frequently to dallas academy.
klf;
“you oughtta slap your baroque prose around a little, maybe it’ll straighten up and pay more attention to actually making a point.”
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I’ll do that if you get to a cardiologist to verify you have a heart! BTW, ol’ Coach Grimes has more than three reserves, since they play specific positions. You can make the center the point guard, the forward the #2, etc. I know that is the over the head of your typical, slow-witted ex-jock (with their colloquial prose), but remarkably we don’t live by their Neanderthal rules or sensibilities.
Think what you will, but the public, the Association, and the school all have spoken — disgruntled kids, disgruntled coach, and immature adults notwithstanding. Rail against the tide if you like, but just remember the smallest of minorities adopts your warped perspective, and thankfully so.
See you around the playground. Maybe you can beat some ten year old out of his lunch money while “respecting” the time-honored game of pitching pennies.
@mespo727272 –
Sounds like you want the coach to work harder to *not* play basketball than to play basketball. For what purpose? My god, this is high school, not grade school. They’re all big girls. When you make the team in high school sports, there’s no fine print saying that the opponent’ll take your wittle feewings into account. The burden was not on the coach in this case – it was on those who scheduled the game and on the ADs who were *in the stands*. The coach did what he could while still respecting his *own* players.
A few points – he only has three reserves. Follow me, now. This means that he had to have at least two starters in the game, all game.
Sounds like he *did* keep the score down. They were up 25-0 three minutes in. If one does the math . . .
What do you mean, “no zone defense?” A lazy zone is the one to play to give your opponent the best chance to score. You can’t ask your kids to “play man and let ’em beat you.”
He shut down meaningful pressure and began playing his bench in the opening few minutes. Again, while still respecting the sport of basketball and his own players, what more could he do? Why’s the burden all on him, anyway? If this is so devastating to the other team, why didn’t *their* coach fold up the tent and go home?
Just wondering – when your kids play musical chairs, do you make sure there’s an extra seat?
Cheers.
ps. you oughtta slap your baroque prose around a little, maybe it’ll straighten up and pay more attention to actually making a point.
rafflaw:
An idiot could have kept this score down. How about playing your reserves exclusively after the 3 minute mark of each quarter except the first quarter. No zone defense and no half-court or full court press. As CCD said, no shots before 4-5 touches. No shot before 5 seconds on the shot clock. No fast breaks. Four corners. Come on this is easy, and I don’t even coach basketball!
Mespo,
If the score is 100-0, the coach did not do enough to make the experience a more humane one for the losing team. It was big of him to remove the press after going up 29-0 in the first quarter. He could have told his kids to not shoot and to play a loose defense. that isn’t giving the game away it is about sportsmanship. I don’t care what the coach says in his own defense. As I stated earlier, I have been on both ends of a blowout and it not a learning experience for either team.
Cassandra:
Do you really need a Dateline Investigation to figure out what was going on here?
klf:
In my world, definitions matter. I clearly referenced the stat that only 4 three pointers were made, not the comments of the team or the coach. “Minutae” refers to “precise details; small or trifling matters,” — much like your comments. But since we’re on the subject, I place no credibility in an unattributed website maintained to defend an unrepentant coach and wallpapered with the the macho comments of Bible-thumping (but apparently not readers thereof) adolescents who have been caught behaving just this side of the “The Lord of the Flies.” (see quoted comment above from that “Christian” site.)In fact, if his team is as obsequious, callous, and suffers from the same win at all costs warping made evident by the comments, I suggest disbanding the team and enrolling in some compassion counseling.
In addition, I place no value in the comments of a coach whose actions belie his own words, and who was fired because of the firestorm that he personally caused. 100 to 0. Please don’t tell me that a coach playing 8-10 minute quarters couldn’t have avoided this mess, if he wanted to avoid it. This was hubris, and the desire to set some sort of record for public consumption, and for bragging rights in his small world. It ended up being his professional epitaph.
When I first saw this story, the first thing that struck me is how much it could have been improved with a little extra digging on the part of the reporter. There are more unanswered questions than facts here. I don’t think it’s the job of a coach to advise students to play to the lowest of their abilities, and if there had been some sort of tacit agreement in place to treat the kids with disabilities more kindly, then I would’ve appreciated the original journalist finding that out for us. Also, if the school system requires that disabled children play with students that have no apparent disabilities, why wasn’t that reported? This is a story without enough meta.