I am a member of the McCaskey Girl’s Soccer team and I was highly offended by your article.
There are many reasons for the performance level of the soccer team, so you cannot blame a specific party for the failure of the team to do well. I could craft a well-supported commentary blaming the athletic director, the players, or even writers who do nothing except pin the already biased public against McCaskey even more.
Since you clearly do not understand the factors affecting our athletic program, I will do my best to explain. It starts from the bottom. We live in an urban district with extremely low participation in the recreational and youth programs. My sister is on the U-12 team and they barely have enough players to field their game each week. Compare this to any program in the county and we fall embarrassingly short. Take Hempfield, for example: they have four U-12 teams and even more girls on club teams. When they have youth practice, the players span multiple fields. My sister’s last practice had an attendance of six.
Fast forward to the high school program; it’s no better. During preseason week, there were girls in attendance who had never played soccer before or had not played in years. Yet they were kept on the JV team, simply because there were not enough girls to make cuts. Varsity had a few promising players, but in order to construct a roster of a meager 16 girls, my coach was compelled to include girls that hadn’t touched a ball since spring 2008 and a player that has a record of quitting every year she has played (she has since quit, along with four other players). Even the most skilled coach could do little in such a dismal situation.
However, despite the bleak state of affairs, our coach does believe that he can turn the situation around. Adam Wood came in with goals and he plans to stay long-term. He has attended multiple middle school games and he has a two-year, five-year, and ten-year plan. In fact, I would accuse him of being an idealist before I would accuse him of a lack of faith.
On a closing note, I would like you to know that the four hits on the online version of your article were from me looking at it on various computers. You write controversial editorials meant to intrigue your readers, yet no one reads them. Maybe if you strayed away from bumbling and ill-informed nonsense, you could gain an audience.
