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Posts Tagged ‘Rants’

Zuckerberg? More like Suckerberg, am I right?

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on April 12, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Me, every single time I use Facebook.

This article doesn’t matter.

I can get as mad as I want, or craft a beautifully barbed attack on Facebook, and it won’t change a thing.

Mark Zuckerberg will continue to swim in a waterfall of cash every day, the AI cops who make my life tougher will continue to make asinine decisions and refuse to answer for their actions, and I will continue to have to use the burning dumpster of a website.

My articles are NOT published on Facebook, or any other social media site.

If you are reading these words, you are here on my blog, Coupeville Sports, even if some people don’t understand the difference.

But I use Facebook and Twitter/X to drive eyeballs to my blog by posting links to my stories there.

The parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles hang out on the former, while other sports writers creep around the edges of the latter.

Facebook, in particular, is a useful tool in promoting my work.

When it wants to.

When it doesn’t, its AI cops remove my links, but won’t show me which links they are removing, or really say why.

There’s some vague mumbo jumbo about spam, so I stop tagging people and it helps … a bit.

Until it doesn’t.

There’s no point in asking why, as Facebook NEVER answers.

Then they make it so the thumbnail photos with my links don’t show up, so I have to work around that and go to posting photos with links attached below, instead of just links.

Twice the work, until one day, for no reason, suddenly the old system works again.

Then they shadow ban me, where I can post links through my personal account, but not under my Coupeville Sports account.

Until one day, for no reason, suddenly the old system works again.

Until it doesn’t.

Then we’re back to Facebook removing a link to a story I published last night about CHS grad Logan Martin winning the hammer throw at a college meet.

Cause … well, they’ll be damned if they’re going to tell me why.

Probably for the same reason they once removed a link to a story for a charity fundraiser.

Cause they can.

It’s all so pointless and beyond frustrating, and it makes it harder to stay as invested in this whole blogging thing.

I’m 12+ years into Coupeville Sports — this is literally article 11,111 (seriously) — and my readership numbers are the highest they’ve ever been.

So, people are getting here, where you’re actually sitting, reading my blog itself.

If I could ignore Facebook, I would, but I can see the numbers on the backside and I know, when Zuckerberg’s folly works, it does kick readership my way.

So, I can rant and rave all I want, but I’ll still be warming my hands on the stupid burning dumpster as I do.

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Respect the coach, respect the job

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on November 1, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Sometimes a soccer ball is just a soccer ball. This article applies to coaches in all Coupeville sports. (Jackie Saia photo)

Back it up and keep on moving.

One of my biggest irritants on this job is watching people invade the personal space of coaches before and during games.

Whether you’re a parent, a fan, a photographer, a writer, a student not involved in that particular sport — this is not about you or me.

There are other times and places to talk to these coaches, to badger them with stupid questions about things that have no direct connection to what their job entails.

These men and women are being paid (and not enough) to coach the children of Coupeville, to build positive programs, to win.

When they are sitting on a bench, or prowling the sideline, they are scouting, they are assessing, they are planning, they are doing their damn JOB.

They do not need you, or me, or anyone, to insert ourselves into that bubble and try to chat them up.

To ask about the warmup music, or why a parent hasn’t paid for a photo, or any of a million little items which can, and should, wait for a better time.

Invariably, our coaches — as solid a group as any in the region — will choose to be polite, to endure having their concentration broken by our inane chatter.

They shouldn’t have to make that choice.

At a professional game, if you invade the coaching space prior to a game, or at halftime, you would likely be ejected by large gentlemen wearing jackets that say security.

Maybe it’s time to treat Coupeville coaches the same.

Go eat your hot dog someplace else and let our coaches concentrate.

Stop getting in their way.

And stop parking in the slots that are supposed to be theirs, on the side of the gym looking at Prairie Center.

Have to walk a little further? Good.

If you wanted the prime parking slot, you should have applied for the job.

Write your questions down, and AFTER the game, AFTER they have had an appropriate time to speak to their athletes, if they so choose, then bring your concerns and ideas and side questions to them.

Unless they have personally asked you to do it in a different manner, or at a different time.

This is NOT about us.

Not about me, or you, and the faster we all accept that, the faster we embrace that, the faster we make life easier for our coaches.

The job is already a test of even the toughest person, and changes in social media, in accessibility, in everything that makes up the modern world, makes it tougher now than it was back in say, 1952.

You can’t scream too loudly, have to make sure everyone’s feelings are taken into account.

Certainly, can’t slam player’s football-helmet-wearing heads against locker room walls, leaving behind lil’ dents which last for decades.

And simmer down, Skippy. I get that the new imposed touchy-feely days are better in a lot of ways.

I’m not calling for heads to bounce off of walls.

Maybe for all cell phones to be taken away, and for our teens to return to working on farms in between games…

Give Bow Down to Cow Town even more meaning if opposing teams arrived to find old-school commitment had swept the prairie, and “Operation: Hoosiers” was in full effect.

But anyway, this is about the life of a coach in 2023, not my desire for Brad Sherman to embrace his inner Gene Hackman.

The point, and I probably have one if I focus, is coaching is not easy.

In any era, much less today.

So have some damn appreciation for those who make the commitment that the rest of us, sitting in the stands, and wandering the sidelines, don’t make.

And stop making their job harder!

When I walk into a gym or come to a ball field, if the coach says hello, I say it back and keep on moving.

If they choose to come over and talk to me during “their time,” fine. That’s THEIR choice.

If they don’t, I’m wearing my big boy shorts, so I hitch ’em up and leave that coach alone and let them do their job and talk to them at an appropriate time.

Some of you out there need to start doing the same.

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What we have here is a failure to comprehend

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on May 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »

“Publish on social media? No sir, that’s for them fancy lads.”

You are NOT reading this on Facebook.

Or Instagram.

Or Twitter.

Or any of a million other social media platforms sprouting up, dying, then sprouting back up, like poisonous mushrooms clinging to life.

If you don’t like something I wrote here, on my blog, to dismiss it with an arch, tossed-off “Well, I don’t have social media” proves only one thing.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I have been doing for the past 11 years on Coupeville Sports.

Because none of the 10,176 articles I have written have ever been published on “social media.”

Like ZERO, ZIP, NADA.

Zuckerberg, and Musk, and their buddies don’t make any money off me.

After I publish a story HERE, I post a LINK to said story on Facebook and Twitter, to drive readers to my actual site.

So, yes, it’s there on social media where readers often then share the LINK, or comment on the LINK.

But a huge chunk of my readership doesn’t have social media, even the snarky ones, and it doesn’t matter, because they come directly to my blog.

You know, that place where all my articles are actually printed.

But I get it.

While Coupeville Sports is overwhelmingly positive in its coverage, there are articles which people don’t like.

When something provokes, that discussion often plays out on social media, which is the 2023 replacement for people meeting and talking in person at Videoville and Miriam’s Espresso.

Social media is the frickin’ Wild West, with people shooting off opinions like they’re gunslingers. Sometimes things get pretty dang funky.

If I was a school administrator, I’m sure I’d also want to avoid the whole mess if possible.

So, it’s a good thing I don’t publish stories on social media sites.

Makes it easy for the big bosses to monitor my written output without having to sink into the swamp.

But, as they do so, it’s always good for them to remember something else.

As it very clearly states in my “Who’s responsible for this?” section, I am NOT an employee of the Coupeville School District.

Never have been.

You ain’t never paid me a cent, and I am NOT your PR flack.

Probably should have gone that route. Might have my indoor/outdoor swimming pool by now.

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Hands off my Willie!

Posted in Hands Off My Willie, Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on May 2, 2023| 3 Comments »

Coupeville Athletic Director Willie Smith, killin’ it as a male model. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

This is not the way.

Sports didn’t get you into this financial hole, and taking arguably the most-efficiently run program in the Coupeville School District and kneecapping it isn’t going to solve anything.

We have one of the most-respected Athletic Directors in the state in Willie Smith, a man who is currently the Northwest 2B/1B League President.

A man who has decades in the game, a man who knows everyone and can get things done with a phone call, an email, or a nod of the head from across the prairie.

He absorbs any and all criticism, remains unflappable and upbeat, even in the worst of times, and has built strong, successful programs even as other schools around us struggle mightily to maintain numbers.

Athletic programs which largely pay their own way, in terms of ticket sales and coaches being willing to give back money from their budgets to help cover transportation costs.

But when it comes time to propose the opening cuts in Budget Wars 2023, we’re going to bounce Willie from his AD job and replace him with an already stretched-thin assistant principal whose own hours would then be cut?

Poppycock, as the kids would say.

Well, maybe the kids from the 1920’s, not the 2020’s, but anyway.

This is by no means an attack on Leonard Edlund, the aforementioned assistant principal.

He is a righteous dude who, in my opinion, has been a great hire for the district.

Working with CHS/CMS principal Geoff Kappes, he does the never-ending work to keep our upper schools operating in a safe, efficient, productive manner.

The last thing he needs is to be asked to do twice as much work for less money, while having to navigate a complex state-wide web of AD’s, coaches, athletic secretaries, bus barn bigwigs, administrators, athletes, and parents who Willie is already on a first-name basis with.

And we’re not even talking about how many new emails and/or texts the man would have to delete on a daily basis from me alone.

That part of the job alone is staggering, and something no other AD in the state has to endure.

Let Mr. Edlund do what he was hired to do – be an assistant principal. Don’t subject him to my inane ranting!

And let Willie do what he does – run an athletic program which, unlike some other departments in Cow Town schools, is a booming success.

I’m not just talking about wins and losses, or league titles, or the fact football and boys’ basketball broke 30-year dry spells and returned to the state tourney with Willie at the helm of Wolf athletics.

We are not, have never been, and likely never will be, a true athletic powerhouse in the state.

We’re not King’s or Archbishop Thomas Murphy – private schools funded (allegedly) by money from blood diamond mines owned by local parents.

And we’re not Lynden or Lynden Christian, where seemingly waves of genetically flawless teenagers emerge from the haze (or a mad doctor’s laboratory), every ponytail, every chin cleft, identical.

We’re scrappy, a farm town where not that many of the kids actually work on farms anymore, but where we can open a can of whup ass on entitled rivals every now and then.

Where Willie’s greatest success as an AD has come has been in maximizing what he has, of getting coaches and players to buy in to his plan to be competitive, and to do it in the right way.

The pandemic crushed athletics at many schools, but thanks to his leadership, Coupeville has emerged stronger on the other side.

Just look at Wolf teams this spring.

The track and field rosters, at both the high school and middle school, are the biggest they’ve been in decades.

High school baseball and softball are able to field win-happy varsity and JV teams while many league rivals are struggling to field just one squad, and girls’ tennis has no issue filling all of its varsity slots.

It’s been that way all school year for almost every sport, with football, in particular, being a bounce-back story.

After several years of rosters which could barely withstand the loss of a player here or there to injury, the Wolves topped 30 players this season and drew in massive, ticket-buying, crowds.

Look, I get it.

Schools are here for education, not sports.

But sports, especially when attention is paid to both the All-State player and the kid who has never run a lap around a track in their life, is invaluable.

Coming out of a pandemic, with mental health issues for teens a huge concern, getting kids out of their bedroom and into the sun (OK, into the prairie wind and rain…), making them a part of something bigger than themselves, is invaluable.

Sports are not bigger than education, but sports keep kids in school, and they are a lifeline for many teens.

I may not fully remember that algebra equation I solved in Mr. Luikko’s class at Tumwater back in the late 80’s.

But that time I shocked my own coach by thumping a rich-school kid on the tennis court — literally drilling him with the ball three times in my win — while my teammates climbed up the fence encircling the court?

That I remember.

And I was that kid who only stayed in school so I could play a sport, any sport.

If you’ve read any of my thousands of stories, I’m a writer thanks to hitting future Rose Bowl-winning quarterback Brad Otton in the face with an overhead during practice.

If I wanted to keep doing that, I had to stop skipping school, and what the heck, my tennis coach, Lionel Barona, was also the journalism teacher.

So, I’m just saying, my writing heir is out there right now, and he or she is probably the kid throwing worms at their friends during practice.

And if there is any AD in this state who will embrace his worm throwers and help them grow into semi-normal adults, it’s Willie freakin’ Smith.

The man, the myth, the ever-grinning legend endured a pandemic to show us the way.

Respect his authoritah!

ADs and coaches across the state fell by the wayside in a dark time, but in Coupeville, I watched as Willie refused to buckle.

He dealt with all the crap thrown at him, enforcing pandemic rules dictated by state officials, and did it in a way that Coupeville, unlike some other districts, never erupted into a full-on culture war.

Willie was firm, but he was fair – even to the asshats who deserved to be kicked where the good Lord split them.

He kept his coaches invested, he kept his athletes active, he found creative ways to honor those who lost games and seasons, he gave hope to a town at a time when it needed it most.

In the best of times, being an athletic director is never-ending work.

The schedules for next school year? Already largely in place, thanks to Willie’s work.

And then Mother Nature laughs, especially in a state and on an island bathed in liquid sunshine, and you have to scramble to rip everything up, and put it back together.

League rules change, state rules change, and ding, another 10,001 emails from the guy blogging at 2:00 AM.

All handled with a calm ease.

I have known Willie for many years, from back in the Videoville days when he first stepped off the ferry from Sequim.

As a coach, a teacher, an AD, and a father, husband, and man about town, he remains one of the best I have ever dealt with.

He is a straight shooter who can be brutally honest (in a good way), someone who doesn’t dodge responsibility, a man who has given a chunk of his life to Coupeville and made our schools immeasurably better.

We’ve already gone through this once before, where a misguided rush to save a few bucks pushed Willie out of the AD’s office.

It did NOT WORK OUT WELL.

Then, things were tweaked, he returned to the job, and guess what? Things got much better, even when the world shut down around him.

The $15,000 you “save” by stripping Willie’s AD duties is not enough to justify the lasting damage you will do.

If Mr. Edlund is the man trying to ignore my emails next year, he will give it his all. I have no doubt of that.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

Edlund should be allowed to focus on holding the front line at our schools, and Willie, the man with the plan, the man whose athletic department is the gold standard in the district, should be leaning back in his chair, making things hum.

Saving a penny to set the bank on fire?

This is not the way.

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We can be better (especially me)

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on September 23, 2019| 1 Comment »

Is this the face of a man who can change? We’ll see. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

We have a problem.

And by “we,” I fully include myself.

Over the eight years that Coupeville Sports has existed, I have, on many occasions, written less than flattering things about various refs and umpires who have worked Wolf games.

Some of that was based on truth, or, at the least, what my admittedly biased brain believes to be the truth.

I’ve witnessed bad calls. Atrocious calls, even.

Occasionally seen what I believe to be bias at work.

Wondered how on Earth a human being can move down the field, or the court, or the diamond, with their head stuck so far up their nether regions.

While I haven’t screamed at the men and women in the stripes, I have used my bully pulpit — this blog — to share my thoughts on the subject.

Sometimes I have been funny about it. Or at least amused myself.

Other times I have been confrontational, rude, or far worse.

I don’t scream at the refs and umps, maybe, but I stoke the fire. I know that.

Oh, I will tell you I do it less today than I did two years ago, six years ago, or eight years ago, which is supposed to show growth. And it might.

But I still do it.

And I really shouldn’t.

People scream at games, and many say things which they hopefully regret later.

There’s a line between being involved, caring deeply, being protective, and just being rude asses.

It’s a line parents seem to be crossing more and more lately, and I see and hear it from Wolf fans at a level that wasn’t there in the past.

We are dangerously close to being the fans of the school other fans and schools talk about, and not in a good way.

I’m no innocent here.

My words, while initially not as loud as a parent swearing at a ref, ultimately last a lot longer, as they go into print, and live forever on the internet.

That’s probably worse.

There are rules for people who write for newspapers, rules I once lived under during a different part of this career.

Here, on my own blog, where I, and only I, edit my words, I have a great deal of freedom.

Freedom to be much more colorful in my writing style.

Freedom to cover what I want, when I want, how I want.

And, also, freedom to be an ass in a way I couldn’t be if my bylines were still running in the Whidbey News-Times or Skagit Valley Herald or Coupeville Examiner.

There is a guy deeply involved in sports in this town, a man who has seen the game from every side, as a player, a coach, a teacher, an administrator, and when he speaks, I do try and listen.

He made a good point recently, and he said it with a smile, but also with great seriousness.

That point is that, at a time when we are experiencing an unfortunate surge in parents being, frankly, asses, at their children’s games, especially in terms of what they scream at the refs and umps, I bear my share of the responsibility.

If I encourage that behavior, if I fan the flames, I’m as much of the problem as the person firing F-bombs like they’re manning an anti-aircraft gun.

I give the griping, the venting, the anger, an air of legitimacy. I celebrate it, and keep stoking the embers.

Coupeville Sports has, I don’t know if you’d call it “power,” but an ability to help shape the conversation.

It’s read by enough people, in the right demographics, and it continually surprises me how far out there in the universe my words travel on these here interwebs.

And I have to do better.

None of us here in Coupeville want to be thought of as ignorant hicks; we don’t want to be the town no one wants to play, not because of our skill, but because of our rudeness.

I’m not telling you not to protest when something seems wrong.

I’m not telling you not to support your team, your school, your town.

I’m not telling you to back down.

I want you to be as loud, and vocal, and supportive as possible.

But I am asking you to look down on the field, as you prepare to scream profanity at the refs and umps, who are being paid very little to make sure your children get to play competitive games, and think for a second.

Think about how the deluge of verbal crap is driving a large chunk of those men and women to quit.

I do.

There are refs and umps I have written harsh things about on this blog who I don’t see on the field anymore.

Were my words the final straw? It’s possible, and it’s deeply troubling.

Think about how the deluge of verbal crap affects your children.

Their coaches, their teachers, the school administration, are asking them to play hard but fair, to show respect for the opponent, their teammates, the refs, and the game itself.

And then their parent is screaming at the ref and asking him or her to do something anatomically impossible.

It’s amusing, until it’s not.

Or I’m bad-mouthing the same refs and umps, calling their integrity into question, giving them ample reason to think of me as a douche bag, and my town as a place they’d rather not work.

It’s amusing, until it’s not.

There will always be bad calls, though, as any reasonable person knows, “bad” often depends on which team you support, and whether the call went against that team.

We live in an angry world.

It may be naive to hope that one small slice of it — sports played by teens and pre-teens — can provide an oasis.

But, for that to even be a possibility, we all have to do better.

For my part, I’m going to try and change one aspect of my writing, by focusing less on the perceived failings of refs and umps.

There are days when it will be a struggle, I’m sure, but it’s something I need to do.

If nothing else, writing this blog, and getting input from people far more in tune with themselves, is sort of like going to therapy. Hopefully some of it sinks in over time.

I hope others, specifically CHS parents, join me in looking inward and trying to find a better balance as well.

It’s simple. We can be supportive, without being asses.

Towns should fear the arrival of Coupeville because they know its teams will dominate on the field, not because their school officials will have to debate chucking our fans out the side door, while banning me from the premises.

We are better. We just need to prove it.

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