Letters to the Edtior for 3-4-09

To the Editor:

After reading your commentary on 20/20 I felt the need to reply. Your are right that some people in the mountains of eastern Kentucky have lost hope, but many have gotten use to a way of life and like it. My husband and I both teach at Johnson County High School and he also coaches football. He was the one praying with the team. We have chosen to live in this part of Kentucky because we love the people and the children.

What truly hurts is when you try to help the kids such as Shawn and they
refuse. Diane Sawyer didn’t tell the complete truth about Shawn.

He had spent two years living with a very loving family who opened their hearts and home to him. He got mad because they asked him to do jobs around the house (take out the garbage etc). He got mad and moved out. Our home was offered to him and we asked that he try his best in school and be in at certain times (curfew). He refused and many others offered help but it had to be his way.

We the faculty at JCHS tried for four years to get him to work hard in the classroom.

This too failed and his story is only one of many here in Johnson County. I hope that Shawn knows what a wonderful opportunity he has at Union. There are more success stories and it would be nice if the national news people would tell them, but once again eastern Kentucky looks bad. My husband is Glenn Reeves and he is from Williamsburg.

My mother is from Whitley County and she, as a retired teacher, thought the broadcast lacked good taste. I have been on home visits as a teacher in Kenton County, Williamsburg, Cynthiana, Floyd Co, Lawrence Co, Martin Co, Johnson Co, and Texas (married to a football coach) and have seen poverty in all these places. We just don’t think about it in America hoping it will go away. For 28 years I have been attempting to show my students there is a better life. I will continue this until I retire. Thanks for one of the finest newspapers in the land.

Patty Reeves
Johnson County

To the Editor:

About two years ago coach Mike Deaton flew over Whitley County High School leaving behind a huge dropping.

We the parents and grandparents of the Whitley County High School Boys Basketball Team are thankful that Jim Jones didn’t come through with his bucket of kool-aid and a dipper or we would all have met our fate. He did actually know how to coach and knew who the true ball players were.
Rebuild a team is what our current coach is claiming he is doing when he is actually doing just the opposite.

I am sure he is telling the Board “Oh you just have to take the good with the bad, trust me if you want me to rebuild this team,” especially since three players quit. When the players quit he asked kids to play that haven’t played in two years because he wouldn’t let them. We were told by a member of the Whitley County School system, “it is not illegal to ask these kids to play, but it is a little unethical.”

These kids were National Champions! The parents of the majority of these kids traveled over several states taking the kids to AAU Tournaments and National Tournaments with the help of an individual that did not have any kids but took these kids and spent a lot of his time and money working with them to help build our program.

We have the ball players and the individual levels of talent to have a state championship team. We are tired of hearing “oh we’re competitive or we represented our school well.” How many more years do we have to hear this before we hear the word Champions? It is hard to believe that someone whom has never played ball and has never had to sit on the bench or be part of a team can be a true coach. If they have never had that experience then you do not have any business coaching no matter how much knowledge you think you have about the game.

It puts a whole different perspective on the way you coach once you have been part of a team. We have plenty of qualified people in Whitley County who would love to have been offered this opportunity and would have done a wonderful job. They would not have shown the favoritism that the coaching staff showed this summer to certain players by calling them individually for some one on one time to work with them. Does anyone in the school system actually check references?

Does anyone do criminal background checks of our basketball coaches before they hire them and if they do why does it not play any part in hiring them? Or we hire this individual because they were the only one that applied? Whose job is this?

We have one cheerleading squad for the Boys and Girls Varsity and actually have had to put some eighth-grade kids on it to make a squad. We used to have a cheerleading squad for both Boys and Girls varsity they did not have to choose which team they needed to go cheer for. We use to have over 100 band members and now we have around 15 and we even have more students now than we have had in the past.

We have definitely seen how politics and money works in our school system here lately. Now you know why people take their kids with talent to other schools. It would be different if it were just the families of these players that were upset but even the fans and some of the players and the parents have made comments all year why we continue to lose when we have all that talent.

When getting beat by 30 or 40 points we ask why certain kids didn’t get to play the coach replied “they don’t match up.” It looks to me like no one is matching up when you get beat by 30 to 40 points. So why were these players not given the opportunity?
Because he knows those kids will out score and out play some of his starters. Oh my gosh! What would that look like?

I know that school is a place to learn and academics are first, but it is these athletes that are usually your better academically inclined kids. If we don’t stop just hiring coaches without having a more thorough hiring process or hiring based on the opinion of a couple of individuals, then we are getting just what we deserve. It’s time for the parents of these athletes to stand up and be able to voice their opinion without having to worry about repercussions. We can have the best of both worlds – excellent academics and an excelling athletics program at Whitley County High School.

Norma Lawson
Williamsburg