Quote:
Originally Posted by lookout123
ok, there is something close to the topic. did you find the letter insulting? or were you pissed that he allowed the score to get that out of hand?
|
All of the above
Let me see what I can do.. bearing in mind that this happened 25 years ago!
1. The root problem was that we were in the wrong conference. We were a private school, and we were in a conference with other private schools. The problem was we were small--there were between 6 and 15 students in each grade; take maybe 30-40 students in grade 9-12 in any given year, take 50% to get the male population, and you see that the odds of getting a spectacular soccer team were not great. (We did have several excellent players though.) Our competitors were larger schools in larger cities.
So we were used to losing. We were not used to losing by 20-0 however. (Even so, we were not the conference doormat. There was one other team we could reliably pencil in as two wins each season. Though they were larger than we were, they were also in a relatively rural area.)
2. The school itself was not well-liked. Almost all of our opponents were bigger and better funded than we were. Have you ever known somebody with a lot more money than you have? Of course, we all do. Maybe a rich guy could buy or sell you for his lunch money. But some of them will come up to you shake your hand, ask how you're doing, and at least pretend that we're all in this together. Some of them you can just tell are wondering why they have to live on the same planet with scuzz like you. This particular school, as an institution, came off like category b).
3. Several of their players were overheard during the game to say "hey stop that, Coach told us to stop shooting" to their teammates.
4. The "apology" basically boiled down to "I'm sorry I didn't pull my first string sooner." If I had been coaching our team, I would have filed the letter rather let my team see it. Our coach chose to read it to us, and it didn't do anybody a bit of good.