High school tries shared leadership rather than captains

http://www.wickedlocal.com/sudbury/sports/x1794936950/L-S-teams-will-try-shared-leadership

Of course, the comments section has plenty of that knee-jerk "trophies for everyone" foolishness.
I kind of have mixed feelings about this. If everyone is a leader, who is a follower and doesn't a team need followers as well as leaders?
One coach brought up the point that sometimes the kids who are selected as captain are not necessarily the best leaders, but rather the most popular.
I'm pretty sure like everyone else, I've seen teams with five, six, seven, even eight captains, which seems like a little much to me.

 

The story reads like the athletic director attended a seminar and probably needs to justify it to put it on her expense account.

I've played on teams with season long captains, rotating captains etc. I don't think it is a bad idea to use sports as an educational tool, but leadership tends to be organic. You can't just put a badge on someone and say "follow."

 

My kid leads just as hard as everyone else.

 

Once, in high school, our co-captains were both injured, and as the sole surviving senior I was defensive captain for a game. I was a mediocre player, and then and now no leader. But there isn't that much to being a high school game day captain. All you have to do is accept or decline penalties, and the frantic sideline signals (Look at me or you won't live to see that letter on your sweater!) were a big help there. So if some school wants to shift it around, no biggie.

 

The school I cover has four captains -- offense, defense, special teams and scout team -- who rotate from week to week based on practice and game effort, leadership and all the other stuff about being a team player.

 

"Trophies for everyone!"

 

On a semi-related front - I do think there is a need for players on teams (or their parents) to have a formal mechanism to contact administrators if something isn't right in a program. The "Coach is God" mentality is ripe for problems.
I wonder how many schools (whether at high school or college) consult students when evaluating coaches at the end of the year or have a defined system for players to contact administrators during the season (and this goes well beyond the "playing time" thing).

 

Since when have parents been shy about opining that there is something wrong with a coach?

 

I guess this means the terrorists have won.

 

A college professor of mine was fond of saying in regards to his old, old, old books which had seemingly every word highlighted: If you highlight everything, you highlight nothing.

 

Never - but if there was a formal process and structure you wouldn't see parents conspiring to oust a coach through backroom dealings. Hire a faculty advisor who is independent of the team, the coach, the administration. It's easy for a parent to bitch and moan in someone's ear - having them file an official report and sign their names? It's like requiring actual names and addresses on comment sections.