Check this out: A girls high school basketball team in Texas defeated their opponents 100-0 the other day. The coach of the winning team was fired for running up the score. With a 59-0 lead at halftime, the coach did not back off. His team continued to full court press and shoot 3-point shots throughout the second half in an attempt to reach 100 points.
The link includes some video analysis from ESPN’s Mike and Mike.
Fascinating. On the one hand, it does seem rather unsporting. On the other: would a coach of a boys’ team be fired for this offense? I’m wondering if this has more to do with the “unseemliness” of a women’s team grinding its opponents into the dust. What’s your read on the gender politics here, John?
Yes, Historiann. I thought about the same thing here. I want to be careful about reading too much gender politics into this, since boys teams get the same criticism for running up the score. But I think your point about the “unseemliness” of this may be on the mark.I have been coaching my girls in youth basketball for four years now and I see a different set of expectations about competition and hard play for the girls than the boys. I once had a parent nearly attack me because I had one of my players set a hard pick on his daughter. His main criticism was that these were “little girls” and I should not be teaching them to do these kinds of things.The fact that this was a conservative Christian school with what I am guessing to be “traditional” views on men and women may also have played into this.