My thanks to Mike Gallagher, the fine conservative talk show host for pointing out the Micah Grimes story on his morning show on Jan. 27, 2009. If you don’t listen to Mike and he’s available in your area, you should make a point to listen to him. (In my area he’s on KNUS-AM, 710, from 7-9AM, M-F.) On that particular day he highlighted a story I hadn’t heard about until then. A girl’s basketball team had won a game by the score of 100-0. That’s right, a hundred point shut-out!
The story was that Micah Grimes, the winning coach, had deliberately made his superior team massively overpower the opposition, even when it was apparent that the other team was badly beaten early on. The charge was really what we used to call unsportsman-like conduct. His school, Covenant School, is a religious high school, which means (to many non-believers) that it therefore, for some reason, has to have a much higher standard of conduct than any other. What is not widely known is that his school had suffered a similar beating just four years before. So, Covenant beat up on Dallas Academy, which specializes in teaching children with learning disabilities such as ADHD, ADD, and dyslexia. Having such a learning disability should not necessarily prevent a person from playing basketball well, although it might prevent a person from concentrating on academics. The fact about the losing team having members with learning disabilities was highlighted in the media most likely for the purpose of eliciting anger for Covenant’s victory and to make people feel sorry for the Dallas Academy’s team.
The odd thing was that it was the winning team’s school’s leaders who were extremely embarrassed for having won the game by so many points. They were so upset by it that they not only apologized for the win, but I heard they either wanted to or actually did forfeit the game! As Mike Gallagher pointed out on his show, what does that teach the girls of both teams? It’s similar to the children’s leagues of the 1990’s which gave out trophies to every player regardless of skill level or results! That behavior was (and is) sickening and maddening at the same time! I realize that the following question is a simplification of the situation but, what was the winning team to do, stop playing in the middle of the game?
To Micah Grimes’ credit, he disagreed with his school and e-mailed a newspaper to that affect. He stated that the girls on his team played hard, just as they should have. For his team’s terrific performance, he was summarily fired! What a strange turn of events, and what completely backwards behavior from the leaders of the Covenant School! When I was young, such a victory would have elicited praise of the highest order, not only from the winning school, but from everyone - including the losing school, not to mention all of the players, and the media. What kind of an example was this to set for the next generation of Americans? To be embarrassed for possessing superior talent and to apologize for your own victory may be politically correct, but it’s a complete reversal of a winning attitude! When it’s these kids’ turn for representing America in the future, will they compete and win or will they apologize instead?
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