Quote:
Originally Posted by JRutledge
You are missing the point. There is a lack of accountability other than what the school decides they are going to do.
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I'm not missing the point, I'm saying that Connecticut may be doing it a little better than some other states.
Public middle school athletic events (and coaches) are supervised by the athletic director of the high school, or the athletic director of the entire school district (system) in multiple high school cities, so there is some accountability above the middle school level.
Supervising athletic directors, which are not located in the offending school, but are at the high school, or the school district (system) office, do not want unsporting activity in their middle school athletic events (public school coaches, including middle school coaches, here in Connecticut are on yearly evaluations and one year contracts).
Our assignment commissioner is simply a middleman in this process, with no penalty authority, gathering unsporting information (including all unsporting technical fouls, even "garden variety" unsporting technical fouls) from the officials and sending it to the athletic director at the high school, or the athletic director of the entire school (system) district.
In the case of "ejections" (players or coaches), or other really serious middle school unsporting problems, our assignment commissioner is also required to send the unsporting information to our state interscholastic sports governing body, and that organization will issue penalties, including game suspensions of middle school coaches.
In other words there is always accountability outside of the school venue, in the case of "garden variety" technical fouls, usually one step higher than the school principal (i.e., the athletic director), and in the case of serious problems ("ejections"), all the way up to our state interscholastic sports governing body.
JRutledge is correct in that accountability almost never goes to the state level unless it's of a serious nature. Every once in a while we hear about a middle school coach getting a one game suspension (happened to the coach of the school where I used to teach) for an ejection, but that's an extremely rare occurrence.
Unlike Las Vegas, unsporting activity in the middle school gym doesn't stay in the middle school gym, or even stay in the middle school; at the minimum it gets "bumped up" one level (athletic director outside of the school venue); at the maximum, it gets "bumped up" to the state level.
Unsporting activity at private middle schools (and private prep high schools) serviced by our local board, and many Catholic middle schools not serviced by our local board (but by some of our local board members "moonlighting"), may not have any higher level of accountability.
Recreation leagues? Travel leagues? AAU?
It's the Wild Wild West in Connecticut.