Parents of Coast Union athletes no longer eligible to serve as coaches

After years of an unofficial but generally accepted policy that allowed coaches to have sons or daughters on their sports teams, Coast Union is going in another direction. At least for the remainder of the 2015-16 sports seasons, no team head coach or assistant coach will be permitted to have a son or daughter on that team.

The policy, which has stirred controversy at the school and in the community, was put in place in the fall by Athletic Director Thom Holt, but there are indications that it wasn’t fully understood or accepted at the outset.

Why not allow a coach to have a son or daughter on the team? Holt, who took over as athletic director this past fall after 30-year Coast Union employee Bill Clough retired, said he met with parents and coaches at the outset of the 2015 season, and the main concern he heard was related to favoritism.

“You cannot be fair while being a parent coach,” Holt explained in an email last week. “I want what’s best for our student athletes, and having parent coaches hurts the culture and the dynamics of a team.”

Parents protest

Brooks Drew, a 30-year Cambria resident whose daughter Alyssa plays softball, took issue with the school’s decision to prevent Chris Corbet (whose daughter Ani Corbet is on the team) from continuing as an assistant coach to head coach Rocky Fordyce.

“Chris Corbet was actually instrumental in bringing CYAA softball to Cambria 12 or so years ago,” Drew said. She also mentioned Heather Markham, who has assisted as a coach in softball and has a daughter on the team — but now is no longer eligible to coach.

“I have not witnessed any favoritism or negative effects” in the softball program, said Drew, who is membership chair of the Bronco Boosters. “The school has two amazing people in Chris and Heather who have so much knowledge, enthusiasm and love of the sport to help our kids.

“I feel very strongly that [the policy is] doing our school and kids a huge disservice for now and in the future,” Drew asserted in an email.

Corbet and his wife, Tamara, who coached girls soccer for three years (including her last year, 2014, when she had two daughters on her team), were interviewed at their home Thursday, Feb. 25, and denied showing favoritism towards their daughters.

“I’ve never had a complaint brought to me by a parent or an athletic director in the past,” Tamara Corbet explained.

“I don’t favor my kids when I coach, and I haven’t seen other coaches favor their kids,” Chris Corbet said.

Tamara Corbet continued, “The idea of that policy is great; it’s an ideal policy in a bigger community. But in a small community, there’s not enough talent out there or people with the skills to do it. You need to use the resources you have.

“I told Thom Holt, ‘Make it a goal to get talented coaches that aren’t parents. Don’t be rigid by sticking to this policy because you made it. We’d be happy to see talented coaches out there that aren’t parents.’ But it’s not likely to happen in our small district.”

Revisiting idea

After hearing concerns from Drew and others, and meeting with school Principal Jonathan Sison, Holt sent out a message Friday, Feb. 26, stating that when his decisions are “not correct,” he is forthright in taking responsibility. Given that this is his first year as athletic director, he said he “may have made an error in implementing an urban practice of restricting parent involvement in teams where their children are playing.

“I have come to realize that parent involvement is welcomed and embraced here,” Holt wrote. He added that he regrets expressing “dissatisfaction with coach candidates and other community members. I apologize for having made my remarks public in writing.”

Interviewed Friday, Feb. 26 in his office, Sison explained that the policy was put in place to, “as much as possible, try to avoid any semblance of nepotism or preferential consideration. That is, giving more play time or more attention (for the son or daughter of the coach) in practices.”

Only volunteers

Sison acknowledged that “Cambria is different” than larger urban high schools in that the relatively small community does not have an abundance of experienced coaches available to step in and help with the sports programs. Hence, parents have been part of the coaching staffs here for a number of sports over the years.

But Sison and Holt temporarily established a practice that restricts “parents’ involvement to only being volunteers,” not coaches. “As it stands, parents cannot be head coach or assistant coach for any team in which their children play.”

Sison doesn’t refer to the change as a policy; rather, he calls it an “executive practice that we put in place here. We didn’t go through the school board for a policy approval; we just implemented it at the school site level.”

Sison added, however, that the more he learns about the culture of Cambria, the more he believes that “we might have to revisit that practice next year. We could potentially be shutting the door to some very dedicated and well-qualified parents who happen to have children playing at the high school level.”

For now, Sison concluded, parents are welcome to be “volunteers,” after passing the standard background checks — such as FBI checks and fingerprinting — for any unpaid assistant at any school.

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 10:52 AM with the headline "Parents of Coast Union athletes no longer eligible to serve as coaches."