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Parents need to step aside

By Adam Brewer, For The Greene County Messenger 4 min read

Players play, coaches coach and parents are just … parents!

It’s a simple philosophy with practically no gray areas, but as the years and the seasons have gone by that simplistic statement has been overlooked and blurred.

In Greene County, as in the WPIAL and all high school sports across the country, being a high school coach has to be one of the hardest jobs.

A coach has to check his ego at the door and be able to run a system that tailors to the players. Coaches have to be a strict, authoritative figure, but also a friend to these players.

You have to please your players, the school board and, especially, the parents of your players.

It’s almost an impossible feat for any coach of any sport to be able to accommodate everyone and not upset someone.

Coaches are human, after all. They make mistakes like the rest of us.

It seems like we live in a sports society of garnering success as quickly as possible, and if we don’t get that success or if something doesn’t go our way, we have to scrap everything and start from the beginning. Fire the coach, and move on.

That is a horrible method to approach high school sports.

No matter the sport, the gender or the classification, a coach needs time to mold his or her team. He or she needs time to put in their system and to see which players fit in that system.

If you look across the board at the successful teams not only in Greene County but in all of the WPIAL, you will see one common thing: stability at the coaching position.

If you look across the board at the struggling programs not only in Greene County but in all of the WPIAL, you will see one common thing: instability at the coaching position.

Sure, this isn’t the case for every program and there are exceptions, but in general, if you don’t have that one, clear voice from the top and the comfort level between coach and players, programs are going to struggle.

Good coaches are hard to find, especially in this part of the state. They are invaluable resources and should not be taken for granted.

If a player or a parent has a minor disagreement with a coach, they shouldn’t automatically think, “I should go to the school board and get this person fired.” Work around it, work through your problems. Don’t go behind the coaches’ back and get him or her replaced.

I bring all of this up because last week Waynesburg Central’s baseball coach Kevin Pincavitch was let go (or as they say now, they are opening the position) at the school board meeting.

The reason he got fired is so absurd that I’m not even going to comment on it because I’m still trying to figure out if this is all a joke or something.

Pincavitch is a good person and an even better baseball coach.

He played at the collegiate and minor league levels, was a pitching coach for the Wild Things and has been involved in high school baseball for several years.

He coached Waynesburg to a playoff berth and a second-place finish in Section 2-AA. The team was young in 2015 with only two players having varsity experience. Now the future for this program is a bit murky because who is going to lead the team?

Not to pick on Waynesburg, because this is a county-wide, as well as a WPIAL-wide problem, but the athletic program has had a tough time holding onto coaches.

Waynesburg has a county-high 15 varsity sports offered through the year, and since the 2008-09 season they have had 31 different coaches in those 15 sports.

It’s an eye-popping number and it just speaks that if a program has instability and a lack of leadership, it’s going to be hard to be successful.

Win or lose, a coach’s primary job is to teach the game to his or her players. You have to teach them how to win and how to handle losing.

It sounds like an easy job, but in today’s athletic landscape and around the WPIAL, it’s very hard to do and to continue to do their job.

At the end of the day, players play, coaches coach and parents are just that … parents!

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