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DGB.com Wish List for the 2010/2011 Season
1. Archmere and St. Thomas More to rejoin/join the Catholic Conference.
2. I’d like to see a Stormin’ Norman’s-like summer league – at least in the high school girls division – return to the Wilmington area. And I’d like it to return without a community service component. Nothing against community service. Just think that that’s the job of families and churches, not basketball.
3. A return to AT LEAST a 22 game regular season.
4. An end to the running clock Mercy Rule.
5. Coaches and Athletic Directors making it a priority to provide full and accurate information with regard to their 1,000 point scorers.
6. Coaches and Athletic Directors becoming more active in retiring player jersey numbers.
7. Having high school coaches selected in a professional, transparent way, through a process that is above board and keeps the integrity high and the politics low.
8. A return to “free market” transferring for student-athletes.
9. Delete all references to coaching out-of-season from the DIAA Rulebook.
10. More night girls games at the public schools.
Fuller explanations:
1. It’s an embarrassment that there are Catholic schools that don’t want to play other Catholic schools. As a community bound together by a common faith, it is awkward at best to justify a Catholic school not wanting to be part of the conference that bears the name “Catholic.” Let’s have a 6-team Catholic Conference. Let’s have ALL those girls improve their skills by playing in that conference against tough competition.
2. Stormin’ Norman’s was a great Wilmington tradition. Moreover, on the high school girls side, it did not compete or conflict with the other (schools) summer league. When it was going, there were high school girls hoops being played 4 nights a week between the two leagues.
3. Contracting the season may somehow make sense on a nickels & dimes basis, but it’s not good in terms of the sport and furthering the development of our high school talent into collegiate talent. Following DIAA’S logic, we should take a month off the high school academic year. Have them start in October or get out in early May. The more athletes play, the better they get. Colleges know this and will go looking for talent from states who understand this.
4. The mercy rule is just dumb. If it’s not in the pro or college game, why have it in the high school game?
5. In talking to a fellow hoops journalist not affiliated with this website recently, the topic of 1,000 point scorers came up and how difficult it is to get all the names and point totals from all the schools. Yet, in much larger states, there seems to be no problem. My comrade put it down to Delaware’s uniqueness in having few long-term coaching staffs and athletic department personnel. The turnover rate is not nearly as high in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, for example. The reasoning being that coaches who are around 10, 15, or 20 years care about their players, teams, programs, and schools more than a 1, 2, or 3 year coach. A deeper pride develops the longer you are coaching in one place. And this could be extended to athletic department folks, too. I, personally, believe other factors are at work as well. Schools just don’t keep these records. In recent years, I approached one school in particular that has a good handful of 1,000 point scorers. The program, after repeated requests, has not provided even half of the totals! I can only conclude it’s because they don’t know the totals themselves! And who is going to go back to all the old scorebooks – if they even exist anymore – and painstakingly add them up for girls who played over 4 and 5 seasons? It’s just not feasible. So, those figures are lost forever. And it’s a shame. It’s a shame for all the great players from all the schools who should be on the 1,000 point list, but who are not because no one felt like adding their points up.
6. If you can’t keep career point totals on your star basketball players, could you at least think about honoring your superstars – your legends – by retiring their numbers? To my knowledge, only ONE JERSEY in the whole state is hanging in a gym, and that’s #23 for Caravel, Kristin (Mills) Caldwell. Go to Pennsylvania. Walk into a school’s gym with a perennially good basketball team, and you’ll see multiple jerseys on display. It’s a great, powerful, and inexpensive way to honor the cream of the crop. I’d like to see this time-honored practice become much more common in the First State. (If there are more jerseys retired than Caldwell's, I don't know about it. To those schools who have retired jerseys, please accept my apologies and my respect.)
7. Boy, this is a biggie! Having gone through 4 coaching interviews at 4 different high schools, I can tell you that there is a huge amount of difference from school to school. There is almost no standardization. You can be interviewed one-on-one with just the athletic director. You can face a full panel of people. Or something in-between. Often, schools put all their eggs in the “character” basket, trying to make sure that they get a good person, while they spend precious little time ascertaining the basketball knowledge of the individual. Sometimes, not enough emphasis is put on character. There has to be a balance. The best interview I ever went through was at Unionville High School in Pennsylvania. There, I faced a panel consisting of: the Athletic Director, the Vice-Principal, two parents of players on the team, one Head Coach of a non-basketball team at the school, and an actual current player on the team. The interview was thorough, fair, and professional. Delaware programs could really learn a thing or two from the Unionville model.
8. When people are free to choose, usually things go better. Why should it be a crime if a student wants to go to 4 different high schools and play sports at those schools all 4 years? Isn’t this America? Even if the athlete is switching schools BECAUSE OF the sports program, what’s wrong with letting the market forces prevail? Why should an athlete be penalized a year eligibility for wanting to leave a program that is not a good fit for one that potentially is?
9. The “coaching out-of-season” rules are probably the most misunderstood, most violated, and perhaps most unnecessary in the whole DIAA rulebook. Many other states do not have these restrictions. Moreover, in Delaware, it only leads to people “ratting out” coaches, investigations by DIAA, and resultant suspensions and other harsh penalties. Instead of focusing so much energy on policing this and creating a climate that encourages coaches to turn in other coaches, why not go free market? The only restrictions should be that you can’t coach at more than one high school in the same sport in the same season (duh!), and you cannot require (make mandatory) that the athletes you are coaching out-of-season (i.e. - from your school team) join your club team, participate in your clinics or workouts, etc. Other than that? Knock yourself out!
10. The story has it that at one time, there were a lot of night games at the public high schools. Just like there still are at the Catholic, Independent and Non-Conference schools. But, then there was trouble at these games. Fights were getting too common and the atmosphere was becoming a bit dangerous. So, the games were largely moved to right after school – where no one could or would see them. My guess is that the problems were largely confined to boys games. And, in the name of equity, school administrators lumped the girls teams in with the boys and made the 2:30, 3:00, 3:30 game times universal across all their teams – boys and girls. But maybe it’s time to relax the policy. Let these teams be seen in prime time! And if trouble crops up in the way of crowd misbehavior, handle it on a case-by-case basis.
Jim Charles January 19, 2010
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