Pine-Richland: Explain coach firing
Pine-Richland officials have said and done just enough in recent days to impugn the school district’s football program and everyone associated with it.
They’ve avoided explaining with clarity the reason they fired the entire high school football coaching staff last week, using the hackneyed duck-and-cover “personnel matters” as justification for their mostly zipped lips.
At the same time, they’ve made veiled references to hazing/bullying/misconduct to justify — kind of — snuffing out the relationship with the head coach and his assistants, who have amassed a phenomenal win record (and a broad base of respect and support) during coach Eric Kasperowicz’s eight-year tenure.
Was that respect and support misplaced? Who knows?
It is true that personnel matters are generally private matters, but last week’s purging of the coaching staff was anything but private from the minute administrators pressed the send button on the message that terminated the district’s relationship with Mr. Kasperowicz and his assistants.
Since then, protests have been staged; school board members were pilloried during a public meeting; a statewide campaign has been launched to discourage other coaches from applying for the open head coach position.
The district held a so-called press conference on Tuesday afternoon, but no questions from the press were allowed.
Two pictures of backroom maneuvering have emerged. One centers on a district-led investigation into hazing/bullying/misconduct within the football program. The other draws an insidious image of jockeying for power by jealous administrators. Some current and former football players as well as their parents have denied publicly that any overt hazing or bullying was tolerated by the coach or his staff. The district hasn’t explicitly said the investigation found wrongdoing, but it hinted ...
And those hints come at the peril of the reputations of the coaches; the players, past and present; and their parents. And, still, the community does not know whether a football program that has garnered four WPIAL titles and two state championships in the past eight seasons deserves the stain of inappropriate — if not outright illegal — behaviors.
Whether intended or not, the district’s mostly-pressed-lips position amounts to character assassination
by innuendo. If there was hazing or bullying or misconduct of any ilk, it likely was known, tolerated and hidden by many.
Coach K. has denied any wrongdoing and has said he is humbled by the community support.
He has a role to play in helping to dispel the cloud of suspicion: He should make it clear that he waives any privacy concerns, clearing a transparent path forward for P-R officials to reckon with the public outcry that hasn’t stopped and that shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
The situation continues to unfold as of this writing. The Tuesday “press conference” included an ominous statement by the school board president that implies more information may be coming.
Coach K. has reapplied for the head coaching post, but it seems unlikely the district will backpedal.
Perhaps that’s the right position, given the information gleaned by the district’s investigation. But the public cannot judge — and that’s the point. The public has a stake in this mess. If Pine-Richland has evidence that hazing or other inappropriate behavior was happening within the football program, that is of keen interest both to the immediate and broader communities. If the district has evidence that hazing or otherwise bad behavior happened with the implicit approval of the coaching staff, school officials have an obligation to say so and to produce some evidence.
To maintain silence is to continue to blow a smokescreen that gives the public just enough of a picture to create suspicion but not a clear enough view to draw a conclusion about what is going on and what has gone on within an elite public school district and its high-profile sports program.