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June 24, 1999 Someone else's job  Tom Farrey, ESPN.com
Each day from Tuesday through Friday, ESPN.com examines the relationship between athletes and non-athletes, through the lens of one New Jersey high school where tension exists. Today: The coach.
BERNARDSVILLE, N.J. -- Before he was father to three athletically gifted boys, before he made Bernards High School into a wrestling power, before he became an institution in this small town, Joel Melitski was a young teacher and coach at a time in American history when the role of sports was paramount and the respect for athletes unquestioned.
"It was the only show in town," says Melitski, who began coaching in 1965. "If you were a male you went out for athletics, and if you were a female you were on the cheering squad or whatever. That was what you did! That was the proof of success. It seemed like society had set up a set of guidelines and if you played by the rules you were successful -- you made those teams, you became popular in school, everything seemed to go very well for you.
"Then in the early '70s you saw other groups develop. You saw kids that no longer were interested in athletics. You saw kids that were more involved in the school musical or in the artistic end or in the theater group. You saw kids that were involved in the drug culture. You saw kids involved in everything that you could imagine.
"Now all of a sudden in the '70s and '80s and '90s you see these other groups coming about, and they're challenging athletes for an identity of their own. And they've been successful at it. It's caused an uneasiness, probably, among these groups."
That is perhaps half of the story.
The other half is that the world of high school sports -- far from being a static property in a sea of social change -- has grown immeasurably over the past three decades. Athletes may have to share the stage more often with other students, but the commitment they are asked to give to their sports, and the rewards given in return, have never been greater.
High school athletes in some schools are expected to compete nearly year-round -- after the spring season there is summer baseball, then winter baseball. When football season is out, the weight room is still open, and often full. Basketball teams fly across the country to compete in national tournaments, and vie for national rankings in USA Today. Top prospects are scouted as early as middle school, not just by high schools but colleges. Athletic scholarships are more plentiful than ever, and that much more of a goal for parents who can save tens of thousands of dollars if junior gets a free ride. Maybe, with hard work, great genes and good luck, he can make millions in the pros. Amid these manifold expectations, a high school coach is now supposed to work with his players in reducing tension they may have with non-athletes? "I just don't know if there's time," says Melitski, whose day as a teacher and coach usually doesn't end until 7 p.m. "It's hard enough to simply coach. It's hard enough just to win baseball games or football games or wrestling matches. To work with 30, 40, 50 kids and try to get that in touch with the inner part of those kids -- that's real tough to do." Yet, coaches must do it, says Gerald Tirozzi, executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. A former college football player, Tirozzi argues that coaches, who spend as much as 25 hours a week with their players, have the greatest responsibility in teaching values such as respect for other students. Tirozzi isn't alone. According to an ESPN Chilton random survey of high school students, non-athletes cited coaches as being most responsible for athletes feeling superior to non-athletes. Athletes in the survey said that other students were more likely to put them on a pedestal but agreed that coaches play a large role. "A lot of times we teach them that it's OK to break the small rules," says Ray Andrzejewski, a former Redlands High School (Calif.) baseball coach who quit in part because he didn't like the direction of high school sports. "In baseball, for example, if you get a call that goes (in your favor erroneously), you're crazy if you point it out to the umpire. Ninety percent of coaches are going to sit there with their hands folded and watch the other team's coach go crazy.
"You've got to think about what you're teaching your kids at that point, because they're looking to you as an example." Finding coaches willing to teach character -- as opposed to winning -- has gotten increasingly difficult, Tirozzi says. There are more teams than ever before, but fewer teachers willing to subject themselves to the demands of coaching, forcing high school administrators to look elsewhere in the community for coaches. Thirty percent of all coaches now are not trained educators. Melitski, a lifelong teacher and coach, is from the old school. He says it's more important for his wrestling team to win with class than to win at all. But the violence and threats directed at athletes in recent years haven't made him change his notion of a coach's role. He lectured his son -- three-sport star Dave Melitski -- after Dave threw eggs at a group of students that had antagonized him, but that was as a father. As a coach, he said nothing to his players after the Columbine massacre in which athletes were targeted. He took the same let's-not-get-worked-up attitude as when a Bernards student several years ago placed the shell of a bomb, with everything except the detonator and explosives, in a locker of an athlete who had been picking on him. The locker was just outside Melitski's classroom. "You have to have faith that these things aren't going to happen in Bernardsville," he says. "Maybe that's not the right way to fly, but we've had a great deal of success at Bernards High, it seems, in putting our trust in kids." Friday: The online series concludes with a look at the role of school administrators in resolving conflicts between athletes and non-athletes, and creating an environment in which all students are valued. |
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Non-athlete Allie Chas-Bowers wishes athletes would be forced to examine their own behavior.
