‘You have to make a stand’
Lincoln High coach speaks on resignation
“Considering my passion for basketball, this was a decision that wasn’t undertaken lightly. It was very difficult and I truly feel bad for my players. Sometimes, however, you have to make a stand as a coach and a person when you believe you’re being directed to do something that’s not right.” — Kent Crooks, former Lincoln High boys’ basketball head coach
Kent Crooks coached the Dec. 13 game against Falmouth (Mass.) High, knowing it would be his final one as the varsity head coach of the Lincoln High boys’ basketball program. After the final buzzer, he, along with longtime LHS assistant coach Jay Kelley, resigned from the posts each one held for the past 14 seasons.
Crooks described it as “one of the most gut-wrenching and hardest things I’ve ever done as a coach.” Those words came from a basketball coaching lifer with “tremendous passion” when it comes to conveying the game’s finer points to his players.
“It’s about doing things the right way,” said Crooks, a coach who between college and high school owns three decades of coaching experience.
The position Crooks took last month stems from serious philosophical differences about the spirit of a school rule concerning students and eligibility — Lincoln ath- letes cannot fail more than one course as determined by the quarterly grades preceding the start of the respective season.
According to Crooks, he was administratively directed to do something that he felt violated Rhode Island Interscholastic League rules, Lincoln High School athletic policy, and his own coaching principles. He declined to speak specifically about the primary grievance that resulted in his resignation as head coach of the Lions, pointing to confidentiality laws.
What Crooks did say was that an appropriate latitude of authority should rest with a head coach, which he wasn’t afforded.
“As hard as it was, myself and Jay took this stance for all the right reasons because to not do it would have been the wrong thing to do,” Crooks said. “Acceding to something that isn’t right isn’t going to help anything. The best
avenue was to bring it out in the open by resigning and walking away and not being a party to it.
“Considering my passion for basketball, this was a decision that wasn’t undertaken lightly. It was very difficult and I truly feel bad for my players,” Crooks added. “Sometimes, however, you have to make a stand as a coach and a person when you believe you’re being directed to do something that’s not right.”
Said a Lincoln High parent close to the situation who agreed to talk under the condition of anonymity, “They stress they want good student-athletes in the school. Something like this, it’s the total opposite.”
Crooks and Kelley conveyed their plans to resign to the Lincoln captains — seniors Tommy Beauchemin, Connor Sheehan and Nick Juckett — after the non-league game versus Falmouth. They met for roughly 25 minutes.
“We embraced with tears and hugs, but they’re smart kids,” Crooks said. “They didn’t press me on the issue. They simply said, ‘Coach, we support you 100 percent.’ They get it.”
Before saying goodbye one final time as coaches and players, Crooks gave the basketball captains enough copies of a poem — “The Man in The Glass,” by Peter Dale Wimbrow, which contains the message “be true to yourself” — so they could distribute it to their varsity teammates and junior-varsity members. Crooks then hand-delivered his letter of resignation to the mailboxes that went to the appropriate people.
On Wednesday, Dec. 14 — the day after Crooks and Kelley resigned — Lincoln School Committee member Staci Rapko-Bruckner was alerted about the LHS basketball coaching positions being posted on schoolspring.com. Crooks said no one in an administrative capacity reached out to him the day after his decade-plus coaching stint with the Lions came to an end.
“I think there could have been a chain of events that could have taken place to prevent the reason for their resignation. A conversation amongst administrators and coaches,” RapkoBruckner said. “I’m sure they secondguessed themselves, but where was their support? There wasn’t any.” Specific reasons why Crooks and Kelley stepped down were relayed to members of the Lincoln School Committee during the closed-session portion of the Jan. 9 meeting. During open session, a 5-2 vote was cast to accept the resignations. Immediately after, a unanimous vote was taken to elevate Steve Carvalho from volunteer to full-time LHS varsity boys’ basketball head coach and Jackson Acciaioli to assistant coach.
Rapko-Bruckner and John Picozzi were the two Lincoln School Committee members who voted not to accept the resignations of Crooks and Kelley.
“I didn’t support the resignation because based on the facts, something wasn’t done properly. It didn’t feel right,” Picozzi said. “Those two have been around for a long time. They’re good coaches and good people.”
Picozzi added, “I think things have to change. They [administrators] have to look at their roles and responsibilities and they have to conduct themselves by that ... moral ethics and good values.”
Lincoln Superintendent Georgia Fortunato refrained from commenting specifically about the coaching resignations, citing that information regarding students and staff is confidential.
“Going forward, the school administration and the school committee will evaluate current athletic polices to ensure that practice complies with pol- icy,” Fortunato wrote in an email. “We are committed to adhering to the school committee policies.”
Fred Hoppe, president of the Lincoln Teachers Association calls it “a loss because they’re veteran coaches who are also teachers in the district.” Crooks and Kelley teach at Lincoln Middle School.
“I support the coaches because we need to look at the policies of the Lincoln School Department which the Lincoln School Committee makes and the administrators and teachers follow,” Hoppe said. “It’s all about policy and procedure, and policy and procedure lead the district.”
As for Crooks, he has zero plans to stop coaching. The outpouring of text messages, phone calls and emails he received in wake of making the choice he did only reinforced that as difficult of a call as it was, sticking to his guns in the wake of a clear injustice of school policy was the right one.
“Can I live with this? Absolutely,” Crooks said. “I wouldn’t have made the decision if I couldn’t.”
Crooks did promise the three senior captains he appointed that he would attend their Senior Night, which for Lincoln is Feb. 15 against Davies Tech.