Coach needs to address what led to 88-point win
One of the guiding principles of Sacred Heart Academy, a girls Catholic college preparatory school in Hamden, is compassion. It’s stated right there at the top of its website.
You wonder at what point Monday night during Sacred Heart’s ungodly 92-4 beating of Lyman HallWallingford did coach Jason Kirck catch the scent of a decided lack of compassion.
Ninety-two points in a 32-minute high school girls basketball game with no shot clock does not happen by accident.
When did it hit Kirck, whoa, this SCC game has gotten out of hand and I better do something about it? Was it 29-0 after one quarter? Was it 56-0 at halftime? Was it 80-0 after three quarters?
Or did he never feel he was involved in anything wrong? If he didn’t, there most certainly is something deeply wrong.
Kirck coached the Staples boys varsity from 1997-2007 before spending a dozen years as boys assistant at Notre Dame-West Haven. He also was the director for the girls AAU teams in the Connecticut Basketball Academy for four years before taking over a Sacred Heart team in April 2019 that had been 2-18 the previous season.
Kirck has successfully built the program to the point where it is ranked No. 3 in the state. Sacred Heart is deep. It is talented. It is
experienced. Kirck is not inexperienced. He knows the game. He knows the score.
What he sorely lacked Monday night was any hint of sportsmanship and compassion. He failed to demonstrate a control of a situation or himself. Coaching at a school of choice where quality athletes attend for a sports program as much as a quality education, that is doubly concerning.
You know what 92-4 is? “Humiliating,” one former state high school girl coach said.
“Gross,” a current one said.
When the score was posted by the CIAC, I tweeted I felt like puking. The nausea remains.
“Sacred Heart Academy values the lessons taught and cultivated through athletic participation including ethical and responsible behavior, leadership and strength of character and respect for one’s opponents,” school president Sister Sheila O’Neill said in a statement. “Last night’s girls’ basketball game vs. Lyman Hall High School does not align with our values or philosophies.
“Sacred Heart Academy administration and athletics are deeply remorseful for the manner through with the outcome of the game was achieved.”
O’Neill said Sacred Heart is in communication with Lyman Hall, the SCC and CIAC and are addressing concerns internally. That is all well and good. Yet until Kirck comes out publicly and says he also is, in the school’s words, “deeply remorseful,” how can he continue as a leader of young people at that school?
In 2009 coach Micah Grimes of The Covenant School in Texas was fired after he disputed his administrators’ view that a 100-0 beating of Dallas Academy was “shameful.” Grimes said he would not apologize “for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity.”
Kirck needs to publicly get on the same page as his administration. He needs to explain what happened. He needs to explain what went wrong. If he is prepared to do that, the school needs to allow Kirck to speak for the good of future opponents, his own players and his own reputation in the greater community.
Otherwise, why would Lyman Hall play Sacred Heart again on Jan. 28? Why would some other struggling teams risk another humiliating gross beating?
According to sources outside Sacred Heart, Kirck has been suspended for one game. Should it have been two? Would have a stern reprimand sufficed?
We can debate that.
What’s most important is Kirck’s mission must match his school’s mission. We don’t need people saying, ‘well, if they don’t want to lose by 88, get better or don’t play.’ We don’t need to have to ‘teach our kids to play their hardest at all times or they’ll develop bad habits.’ We don’t need, well, ‘12 Sacred Heart players did score and he used his bench.’ By embarrassing Lyman Hall, he embarrassed Sacred Heart tenfold.
A former girls high school coach, who asked for anonymity, said he watched the game on NFHS:
“I had it 46-0 in the second quarter when Sacred Heart stopped pressing. They continued to play man-to-man, forced a lot of turnovers leading to fast breaks right to the end. Jacking threes. What was weird they held the ball the last 55 seconds of the first half when they had been shooting every 10-15 seconds. I don’t know if it was to preserve the shutout or just hold for the last shot. The second half started they just kept scoring and scoring again. A sad situation all-around.”
Compare that coach’s words to ones by Lyman Hall coach Tom Lipka emailed to our Scott Ericson four hours later:
“Sacred Heart pressed for most of the first half then called it off and went into a tight man-to-man half court defense trying to get steals. They fastbreaked the entire game right to the end. They never went into a zone and continued to push the ball up the court and shoot threes whenever they could. They showed no mercy throughout.”
Good grief, two descriptions were the same.
The head coach of a team up leading by 30 controls the scoreboard. The superior team can’t be bullies. Notre Dame-Fairfield coach Maria Conlon, whose team often faces mismatches, was up 26-0 against Thomaston last week.
“We took the press off and had the offense runs sets through three times,” she said. “Games like that are great opportunities to work on multiple options within our sets. I am not concerned with how many fast break layups we can score against weaker teams. The fourth and fifth option in our sets is what we will need to execute on in March to win.”
Final score: Notre Dame 73, Thomaston 38.
“We’ve had a lot of games in the past, where we could have won 90-4,” said Frank Lombardo of Holy CrossWaterbury in his 28th year of coaching. “We’re pretty competitive and the NVL has had a lot of non-competitive teams in recent years.
“It can be very difficult to keep the score respectful, but our main priority is to respect opponents. I also feel it takes both coaches to buy into that. In the past, coaches have said something to me about pressing at the end of the first quarter when it’s 18-0. My kids need to play and learn how we want them to play. So it’s a balance of what I think is respecting the other team and what they think is beating on them.”
There are games, 25-2, in the first half when he pulls the press off. There is no possible way the other team is going to win. If it’s a team with quality wins, he said, he may keep the press on longer because you never know what will happen.
This is basketball sense and common decency.
Holy Cross beat Derby, 60-6, in the first game of the season. Lombardo was on leave because of COVID. He said he was at home watching on NFHL “praying, yelling” for Derby to score.
“We only teach man-toman at practice, but when it gets to the point where it can be disrespectful, we go to a 2-3 zone with both feet in the paint,” Lombardo said. “We’ll back off offensive rebounds. We’ll pass 10 times before shooting. It’s a great time to play jayvee or freshmen, but on their end, they’re trying to impress me. I can’t say to them don’t steal a ball or score a layup. I have to say we haven’t been in many zero games before, it’s usually a matter of controlling our points.”
SCC commissioner Al Carbone said discipline wasn’t up to him. He spoke to both schools to make sure they were communicating.
“It’s unfortunate it happened,” Carbone said. “What can you control? What can you not control? It will be a learning experience for everyone involved. It’s also a reminder this isn’t AAU in the summer when you turn off the scoreboard and everyone forgets. High school scores live on in perpetuity.”
Two weeks after losing 101-35 to East Hampton, the Hale Ray girls basketball team forfeited its Shoreline Conference rematch with East Hampton in February 2020. In 2018, Windsor girls crushed Bulkeley-Hartford, 88-9, and afterward Bulkeley coach Pat Mairson explained he was missing his four best players for a variety of reasons, expelled, DCF, injury, grades. The over-arching problem, he explained, was magnet schools had destroyed athletic programs in Hartford.
Kendrick Moore, Windsor’s coach at the time, said he was trying to rectify a sloppy start to the game before a quick turnaround for a big game against HallWest Hartford. Windsor didn’t press, but continued to use a half-court trap and outscored Bulkeley — ouch — 46-2 in the second half.
“I feel horrible.” Moore said at the time. “I take the blame. Our goal is never to embarrass anybody.”
We await Jason Kirck to say the same.