Somewhere along the line, we've missed out on what's supposed to be important when it comes to high school athletics.
About a week ago, 17 year veteran basketball coach at Kimberly High School, John Miron, was relieved of his coaching duties. Miron and his Papermakers struggled to a 6-15 record this season, but last year he led the Patriots to the Division 1 state semifinals. Over his 17 seasons, Miron has 241 victories.
The Kimberly school board approved the decision without giving Miron the chance to plead his case, and it appears the decision was spearheaded by Kimberly Supt. Mel Lightner. Since the decision came out, I've heard mostly negative criticism from fans towards the school for its decision.
Miron is a quality person. He's always kept his nose clean and basketball wise, has coached a lot of excellent teams and excellent students.
I know I'm dating myself, but when I went to school, if a coach did his or her job in the classroom, that was the most important thing. A coach didn't lose his job because his team didn't win enough games, or didn't run the type of offense that was most popular with the school board or it's superintendent.
Nobody likes to have a program that loses year after year, but that isn't the case in Kimberly. John Miron won 241 games in 17 years. He's been to the state tournament several times, with a couple of championships under his belt.
So far, only the Kimberly school district is looking bad here. They've decided not to renew the contract of a coach that's done nothing wrong and has great admiration from the entire community.
Somebody needs to remind the school board and it's leader that this is not a University. John Miron is not good enough to coach, but he's still good enough to teach. Or is that ball going to be dropped on he and his family next?
Kimberly isn't the only school to go down this road, I'm sorry to say. But I wouldn't at all be disappointed if it were the last.
These coaches spend countless hours developing youth programs, let alone coaching their respective high school team. When you break down the payout, it's hardly worth the money. Instead, the value a coach gets is seeing his or her student athletes excel, give it their all, playing as hard as they can so that at the end of the day, they can say they did their best.
John Miron instilled this in all of his current and former players and deserved a much better set of cards then the ones he received from the Kimberly school board.