Braintree High School Parents Force 2 Time State Champion Girl’s Basketball Coach To Resign Because Their Loser Kids Don’t Get Enough Playing Time
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Source: Kristen McDonnell, who built the Braintree High girls basketball team into a state powerhouse, winning five South Sectional crowns and two Division 1 state championships over the past six seasons, announced on Twitter on Monday night that she is stepping down “with a very heavy heart.”
Tom Herlihy, whose daughters Bridget and Brianna both starred for the Wamps under McDonnell, said the stunning development was due to a “parent revolt.” “I knew there were problems in the ranks, but I didn’t know it would come to this,” he said. “To be honest with you, I don’t blame Kristen at all. The bottom line is it’s a thankless job to begin with, and she had parents who showed absolutely no gratitude at all. It was all about them, all about their kids. … Totally mind-blowing.”
“You hear this all the time,” Herlihy added. “The parents are so involved in the day-to-day goings-on of the team. They go and watch the games and they all consider themselves experts, even though they don’t have any credentials. But Kristen played in college (at Stonehill, where she scored 1,215 career points), she played in high school (Boston Latin), she was a star in both. She’s got a lot of coaching experience. She’s a bona fide expert; you can’t dispute that. She’s a fully qualified and accomplished coach. These parents, their hearts get in the way of their heads. They see their kids sitting on the bench and they feel bad for them and so they lash out at the coach. “As a result, she decides not to take it any longer and she leaves.”
McDonnell was 166-25 over her eight seasons at the school, including a 63-game winning streak. She led the Wamps to back-to-back Division 1 state championships in the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons. The latter team finished 25-0 and is considered by many to be the best high school girls basketball team in state history.
Braintree girls’ basketball coach Kristen McDonnell, who led the Wamps to two state titles, has resigned. https://t.co/7Ij895EPtw pic.twitter.com/pNW7UmJ3PQ
— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) April 4, 2017
https://twitter.com/Jennnaroche/status/849801406869581824
166-25 w/ 2 state and 5 sectional titles over 8 seasons wasn't good enough for some psycho parent. Think about that https://t.co/EChdRO3TMb
— Brendan C. Hall (@BHallUFA) April 5, 2017
The amount of control that suburban parents have in the fates of their children’s coaches never ceases to amaze me. And make no mistake about it – this is a suburban problem. It hardly ever happens in cities. Because city kids were raised to accept the fact that they might not be the best at everything. Mommy and Daddy didn’t have time to micromanage every single aspect of their sporting careers. If Junior isn’t getting enough playing time at Worcester South or Doherty High School, Mommy and Daddy aren’t calling up the school to demand a meeting with the coach. They accept the fact that it’s probably because Junior didn’t do suicides fast enough. This is a town thing. It’s a real trade off because on the one hand you want more parents to be involved in their kid’s lives, but on the other hand, this is what happens when it goes unchecked.
I’ve seen it before a million times. Kids who grow up in Worcester don’t have as much money as kids from the burbs. So their parents can’t send them to the fancy camps, and sign them up for AAU, and send them to play in cash-grab tournaments in Disney World. Town kids grow up in insulated bubbles. Parents think that their kid is going to the pros because he’s been the leading scorer for his AAU team the last three years. Then they get to high school and reality sets in, and instead of telling their kid to work harder, they demand the coach’s head.
What’s really insane about this is the level of success that Kristen McDonnell has had at Braintree. She lost an average of just three games a year. She won 63 games in a row. She led them to back to back DIVISION 1 state championships. Do you understand how hard that is? Many schools have never won a state championship in any sport in their entire existence. Braintree has to go up against the biggest and the best the state has to offer, and they won state championships 25% of the time while Kelly McDonnell was the coach. There’s probably 100 Division 1 schools in the state, so if you were to pick them out of a hat randomly, there’s a 1% chance you’d get Braintree High School. Yet the Wamps won state titles not once, but twice during an 8 year run, and nearly won again this year. That’s an insane amount of success.
And now she’s gone because the parent of some loser kid, who has never been told no their entire life, didn’t like the fact that their daughter rode the pine for a state championship winning team.
My question is, where is administration on this one? Why are they allowing this to happen? This is clearly a woman who is making a difference in the lives of children, and doing a GREAT job. We need more teachers and coaches like her. She is an invaluable asset to the school, and they’re just letting her walk away because a bunch of parents don’t know how to sit down and shut up? This is the problem with high school administrators. They’re gutless. They will side with the parents, no matter how unreasonable they are, because the parents are the taxpayers. Coach McDonnell is an employee, and since Braintree High School apparently doesn’t value success, she is an expendable one and less valuable than the parents.
What I wanna know is, who are the problem parents? This is where we dig in our heels at Turtleboy. We find out the REAL cause of the problem and expose them ruthlessly. We’ve checked all over Twitter and Facebook for their names but can’t find anything. Having some anonymous parents be the bad guy isn’t nearly as fun. We need someone to sling mud at. We need to find and expose these parents and put their pictures all over our blog, so that it will hopefully deter other helicopter parents from doing so going forward. It’s gotta be someone on the parent of someone this list:
Anyone with any more information from Braintree is more than welcomed to message us on Facebook.
P.S. How are they still allowed to be the Braintree Wamps in the era of PC madness? Good for them, just not sure how the PC police give them a pass but go after Tewskbury and Turners Falls.
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13 Comment(s)
Worcester South- I coached there and yes, most parents aren’t involved. However even there, the AD and parent(s) in the school system try to run the show and the AD/athletic liaison let them. I had to resign because a mother in the school system didn’t believe in my basketball strategy and she wanted to be coach even though they’ve had a new coach every year for three years, and even though I firmly said at the beginning she was not allowed to be a coach as she wasn’t hired as one. Yet, her daughter was on the team and she taught in the school system, so she had more power than me. Parents run the show, even at South. Except for the Boys Coach who is one of the best coaches/best people I’ve ever met..but still you get the parent political power drama even at city schools with no help from ADs.
There is a way to cut down the possible player parent suspects. Somewhere online the team stats have to be posted. It’s going to be a girl with lack luster stats because she’s not playing. You can probably cut this list down from 12 to I’d say 4 possible girl’s parents. Just keep cutting down the list and you’ll have a couple options left to start. This shit sickens me. It happens more and more all over the place.
That’s the way many of the kids parents were brought up too. It makes babies of the kids and causes many issues like this one. Go back to the WW2 gen., not much would have happened this way. It was more about respect of the coach and the kid doing their best. Things have gone astray in the past couple of generations. Entitlement is the word.
The problem is that everyone and their brother/sister is a star on their AAU team. AAU is not what it was back in the day. Today, every kid’s dissatisfied dad starts an “AAU” team. If you can pay, you can play AAU. And your team will qualify for the Nationals, even though your team blows! You’ll pay an exorbitant amount to travel and stay in Fla. and get blown out. But hey, you made the nationals! Then, the following high school season the dissatisfied dad’s “AAU star” is on JV, or riding pine on Varsity and there is hell to pay. These stories disgust me and it seems this is the reason that so many high schools have either bad coaches that cater to influential parents, or have qualified people that won’t bother to coach because of the political BS.
Nailed it!
Kids sports is a big industry now. Most AAU teams are just a money maker for the parent/coach. They pander to all the parents that live vicariously through their kids.
“Money Ball” literally.
Just dig into the records and look at the scoring statistics, likely the player with the least points will stand out among the rest. That kid’s parent is the likely culprit.
She can come and coach the Auburn boy’s varsity team. Lord knows they need a coach that knows what they’re doing – but then again Coach Nedz is there because Auburn is full of the same shitty parents as Braintree.
Great job parents. Now the team over the next eight seasons will be 25-166 with a 2 game winning streak. But hey, you’ll all get trophies and orange slices for last place. hahahahahahaha! Your kids aren’t five years old anymore, grow up.
I agree that these parents are queefs and need to be shamed. I have a different angle on your thoughts about burbs vs. city, though. The difference has nothing to do with sports; more parenting, I think. The overbearing parents in the city send their kids to the private schools and can still be complete dicks to those coaches. The city public school sports parents are largely indifferent. Worcester schools also struggle to find coaches for certain sports and schools and part of the reason people won’t coach there is because parents give no fucks. So, summary is it can blow hippo dick to coach in either the burbs or the city.
Why can’t coaches put the shitty player in like the parents want, and then later the rest of the team beats them with a bar of soap in a towel in a cold shower because they caused the team to lose. That’s how we kept the shitty players off the team in my day (98-02).
Kike country what can ya do.