An implication of the Sept. 21st Sunday News article “McCaskey’s Challenge” was that McCaskey High School’s teams are performing so poorly because the players are subject to all of the disadvantages and problems of inner city youths.
Football coach Scott Feldman is quoted: “It’s hard to be good at [football], and we just don’t have a lot of kids right now who are willing to do it. I don’t think we’ll have football at McCaskey in another couple years if we don’t change some things.”
Long time volunteer basketball coach Steve Powell is quoted as saying “.. you’re not gonna escape it, this is a school district with basically minority young people. We have to make them understand what it’s like to be a part of something. A lot of suburban kids already have that. Most of our kids don’t. People don’t want to hear it, but it’s reality.”
To test whether the problem was inner city kids, NewsLanc investigated the 2007 win / loss records of the other inner city high school football teams in our region. To wit:
Coatesville High School football 5-5 (5 wins, 5 losses)
Harrisburg High School football: 13-2 (13 wins, 2 losses)
Reading High School football 3-7 (3 wins, 7 losses)
York High (William Penn) 10-2 (10 wins, 2 losses)*
The above results seem to be at variance to the excuses being proffered for McCaskey’s poor performance in football and possibly other sports.
Let’s not blame the kids for teams not being competitive. Let’s also examine the proficiency and expectations of the coaches.
* Editor’s note: Our initial posting erroneously included the following as inner city high schools.
Downingtown East football 8-3 (8 wins, 3 losses)
Downingtown West football 10-2 (10 wins, 2 losses)
