"You're not being nice to us!"

I'm not getting anymore involved than I already am.

 

I should clarify: I meant to say I didn't ask the coach directly what problem he had with us. I told him if he ever had a problem to come to me because he felt he couldn't trust anyone else at the paper.

 

That's cool. That's the way to handle it.

 

Still sounds better than my go-around with an assistant track coach. He was upset about a headline that said "Rough day for Podunk" and thought it was misleading. I explained to him that I felt the headline was justified, since they lost in a two-team meet by 40 points, and the article wasn't harsh and I understood his concerns and would take them under advisement. He responded by implying my handicapped writer at the event was retarded. This led to a screaming match and me kicking him out of the building.

 

Yeah. Folks are weird.

 

I thought the exchange was going swimmingly until these last two sentences. Just bizarre. Hilarious, but bizarre.

 

probably the maddest i ever got at a coach was about a decade ago when the local prep coach, who i had known for a long time, proceeded to rip into one of our parttimers who was covering this team for the first time. thankfully, i was there to see this whole thing unfold.
the writer was very young, doing the best he could and making an effort. but the very game story he wrote about this team winning wound up being short (because of some space situations) and failed to include some praise-to-my-team type of quotes made by this particular coach.
i accompanied the writer to this particular game because he wanted me to point out some things to maybe include and help him out.
after it's over and this team wins, we go into the locker room for the postgame interviews. no sooner had we stepped in but the coach started cussing out our young writer. in front of everybody. i let him rant until he turned red in the face, then said, "coach, let's you and i go into the next room and discuss this between us and us only."
long story short, I told him if he ever pulled that shit again and acted like a fucking horse's ass, we were going to have a long and not-so-nice meeting with the principal of that school and, if need be, the fucking superintendant of the school system. he claimed the media never treated him right, never wrote a fucking nice thing about what his team had done and a ton of other bullshit that had no basis whatsoever. so he figured he was justified in picking some young writer who was just getting his feet wet in the business as a target.
one of the worst, if not THE worst, displays of immaturity and not having a clue performances by any coach I've ever seen.

 

I don't think I've ever yelled at a coach because I understand that I am the person they get to vent their frustrations with the paper at.

I have gone round and round with ADs, principals and jagoffs in charge of the press box, though, who try to keep us from doing our jobs.

 

Next time you meet, KY, pants him.

 

But he wears suspenders, so that's a no go.

 

Threaten to take down your paper's Web site if the coach doesn't quit complaining about the coverage.

 

Ace...i just couldn't help it in this situation. He was way out of line doing that in front of everybody. If he wanted to vent, and having known me for eons, he could chewed my ass out. But not a young upstart who was trying to get his feet wet and learn something. That crossed a big line in my book. And the fact that the coach had known me for a long time should have given him some type of "credentials" to realize that the paper and any reps we had there, were doing their very best.