Leading off today: Conflicting loyalties.
It's an issue that many of us who've covered high school sports over the years have seen first-hand: Club and Olympic Development Program soccer coaches discouraging players from participating in other school sports during the winter and spring . . . AAU basketball coaches shuttling basketball prospects all around the country during the summer and "assisting" in their transfers from CHSAA to PSAL schools (or vice versa) . . . And the beat goes on.
Name a sport and there's almost some ongoing conflict.
Yesterday, the New York Daily News did a lengthy piece on the conflict between club and school programs in the sport of track and field, and examples cited by reporter Ebenezer Samuel should raise alarm signals.
Sports must above all else be a safe haven for athletes, which is to say that the first responsibility of any school or club coach is to assure the well-being of the students. And achievement/success for the athlete is more important than what those accomplishments do to further a coach's ambition.
And if there's a school vs. club conflict not covered above, then the coach needs to remember who's paying the freight. If you're drawing a check from the school (a.k.a. the taxpayers), then your allegiance needs to be to the school when all else is equal.
And in cases in which the school and club coaches are not the same person, the rule should be clear. The club coach should have no say while the high school season is in progress.
That does not appear to have been the case with Springfield Gardens sprinter Rashawn Simpson. In June, he ended up running for his club and school teams on consecutive days. Competeing in the Junior Olympics qualifier almost certainly led to a sixth-place finish in the PSAL outdoor championships, costing him a lane in the state meet at Cicero-North Syracuse the following week.
"If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have run JO," Simpson told the paper.
"The high school should feed the club team in the summer, and vice versa," said 1996 Olympic gold medalist Derrick Adkins, director of track and field at the Armory in Manhattan. "It should all work together for the good of the student-athlete."
The newspaper story cited several other conflicts, chiefly involving PSAL teams and coaches. It's less of an issue at CHSAA schools, which typically do not face the same sort of union restrictions when it comes to hiring. The worst was probably Transit Tech runners Julian Wood and Malik Sykes telling coach Sydney McIntosh they would only compete if they could skip team practices and train with their club team. McIntosh said no.
Transit Tech athlete Dexter Bollers approved of McIntosh's stance.
"Julian, he was always like, 'I'm trying to help you guys
