As this paper’s sports reporter I cover sports news from all over the Tri-City area and beyond. On Jan. 17 I attended the Golden State Warriors’ Educator’s Night at the Chase Center in San Francisco. All night I listened to people praise educators, teachers, librarians, instructors and coaches. That same weekend I continued to work on the story of 45 coaches who were fired by the school district.
The juxtaposition of seeing an arena applaud educators to speaking with coaches who felt expendable and disrespected was jarring.
The decision made by the Newark Unified School District was not well received by the community, and many took to the article’s online comments section to not only express their frustration, but to share the lifelong impact their high school coaches left on them.
I attended Newark Memorial and was a student-athlete all four years of high school. As a student-athlete I have experienced the relationship between an athlete and a coach. A high school coach is one of the only adults, other than a parent or guardian, who follows a student’s high school journey, day in and day out, for four years straight.
My coach, who now coaches at a different institution, was the only person in all of my high school career who told me that I could make it into a four-year college—something that was never on my radar as a first-generation American. That encouragement didn’t come from a teacher or a counselor, but a coach. I know my teachers and counselors cared, but my coach was the only adult in high school who’d spent three years building a relationship of trust with me. So when he said I could do it, it carried a different weight.
For many, sports is one of the only pathways to higher education and a future beyond academics. To shake that foundation not only insults the work and time coaches put into their athletes, but rips a mentor and trusted adult from the lives of so many young adults.
