By Staff
Athletic Management, 17.4, June/July 2005, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1704/wutongues.htm
In Pinellas County (Fla.), high school coaches will now need to watch their words more closely than ever before. Following an incident involving one of the district’s football coaches, Superintendent Clayton Wilcox is looking into a policy that will formally instruct coaches not to use curse words or racial epithets when addressing student-athletes.
The idea was initiated by school board members as they decided the fate of a football coach who told a player to get his “black a--” back into the huddle. The coach was stripped of his coaching duties, and the incident prompted a larger discussion among board members about profanity on district athletic fields.
Initially, several board members were in favor of a zero-tolerance policy prohibiting any form of profanity from coaches. Recognizing the complications that could arise from such a blanket policy, Wilcox has asked a committee of district coaches to come up with a more realistic proposal.
So far, Wilcox is confident that the policy will suggest firing a coach who uses a racial epithet or directs profanity toward a child. But, if a coach uses profanity in the heat of competition, he wants a more progressive disciplinary policy to combat the behavior.
“The majority, if not all, of our coaches are upstanding individuals and the last thing I want to do is create a policy that automatically resonates throughout a coach’s career just because they lost their temper and used a couple curse words,” says Wilcox, who has coached basketball at both the high school and collegiate levels. “We’re looking at how to make that distinction in a policy and then how to enforce it.
“We really want to take a common sense approach, but at the same time we’ve got to draw the line somewhere,” he adds. “We’re asking the committee to take their time, be thoughtful, and get it right the first time.”