Flaws we each can learn from

March 03, 2008 12:45 am

— I’ve got to believe Preston High School never expected the kind of contact they'd see at the Class A state girls basketball tournament.
On the court is expected, but off the court?
That’s where the nasty stuff is starting to happen, sadly, with increase — basketball, football, baseball, you name it.
Sadly, Muskogee resident Mickey Duncan, the Preston girls coach, was attacked by the father of one of his key players after Thursday’s quarterfinal win over Crowder. The father, Jeffrey Abbott, faces criminal charges. Oh, and he won’t be attending any Preston athletics events for the remainder of the school year — or six months to be exact.
Good riddance, I say.
This kind of thing is becoming like school shootings. They happen regularly, too regularly, and numbed by it, we just push it to a passing thought on the news or chalk it up as just another day on earth.
But just wait and watch at Hatbox this spring and you'll see it again. In an incident that went by quietly in an early evening game during the Bedouin Shrine Classic, a couple of Boynton-Moton boys basketball team members engaged in an attack on one of their coaches, which just goes to show you — the kids are learning from what they see. And Hatbox’s next incident just might be player-instigated.
The Preston daddy needs to have the book thrown at him from some judge. Somewhere, a precedent needs to be established that this kind of behavior is simply not going to be tolerated anymore. No offense to Fort Cobb-Broxton, and I know that they shot incredibly well in Friday’s semifinal, but foul trouble also hurt Preston and I can imagine that being traced not only to the tone of the game but mental focus. I have little doubt in my gut that Thursday's antics weighed heavily on the team, coach and even fans.
Dad needs to take a bow, he stands to blame for the absolute crash of a season of a team ranked as the best in Class A from start to finish.
That’s one type of outside input that needs to end.
Another is brewing at Muskogee High School where parents and other outsiders reportedly played a part with the resignation of one coach, the dismissal of another and the almost-dismissal of a third coach whose ouster was retracted after a number of parents went to athletic director Bobby Jefferson on Wednesday to speak on the coach’s behalf.
Parents have the right to speak and be heard. There has to be a process, though, and part of that process needs to be a lot more advance homework on behalf of those who hire and fire and a respect of the line of authority for doing so, even within the various levels of administration itself. If that many people were upset about one dismissal, was enough known in the first place to justify the decision? With the retraction, apparently not. Or maybe, the call was being made from a person or people who aren't paid to make that call.
Mistakes can happen and in this case, corrected. But to retract a firing makes for an extremely awkward situation for those left in its aftermath, and maybe over time, its forgotten. Hopefully it will, but a strange precedent has been established.

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