What does a coach do when his players talk back to him, ignore his game instructions and can’t be on time for practice? Most coaches today would grumble, but accept it as part of dealing with modern youth. Coach Mike Allen suspended his starting five players instead.
Allen took over coaching the boys’ basketball team at Gunderson High School in San Jose last year. He believes in discipline and respect, but he didn’t find much of those qualities among the players on his team. Instead, he found lousy attitudes and a lack of commitment.
He gave the players on the team “two, three, four chances” to correct their shortcomings, but nothing changed. Allen said the players continued to talk back to him, ignore his instructions during games and “showboat” on the court. So he suspended the starters. Shortly afterwards, the rest of the team confronted him, demanding that he reinstate the suspended players. When he refused, all 13 members of the team quit.
“I refused to win at all costs,” Allen told the San Jose Mercury News. “I knew I needed to take a stand or it wasn’t going to be a worthwhile season.”
After he lost his entire team, he called up players from the junior varsity team. He’s now playing a varsity schedule with just six underaged and unprepared players. The team has a 3-16 record — and all three of the wins came from before the suspensions. In many games, the young players are being blown out. They finished one game with just four players, after two of them fouled out.