The Seattle Storm waived Sheryl Swoopes last week. It seems like a disrespectful way to end her time with the Storm, but I guess it shows that the WNBA is a business and that’s what happens in the sports business world, no matter how amazing your past accomplishments are.
However, this article caught my eye. It seems Sheryl has been doing some coaching on the side. She is a volunteer coach for a middle school girls’ basketball team. What I love about this article, besides the fact that it is so cool that Sheryl is interested in coaching and seems to have an unbelievable sense of humility, is that the Overlake School team, parents and athletic administration are darned happy to have Sheryl Swoopes coaching the team. Well, of course, you say. Why wouldn’t any team, boys or girls, be thrilled to have a three time WNBA MVP, three time Olympic Gold Medalist and NCAA Champion be their coach?
That is exactly the point. The article focuses on Sheryl Swoopes, the basketball star with one sentence noting that her partner, Alisa Scott, is helping her coach the team and raise her son. The completely matter-of-fact nature of the article is a model for how it should be. The reaction of the folks at Overlake School to having Sheryl Swoopes, an out lesbian, and her partner coaching middle school girls is a model for other schools about how to focus on what is important when hiring a coach. Does she have the basketball credentials? What kind of person is she? Will she be a good role model for our young people?
If only more high school and collegiate programs would follow the lead of the Overlake School Middle School Girls, their parents and the school athletic administrator, John Wiley. If they did, maybe more lesbian coaches would feel safe being more open about who they are.
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4 comments:
this kind of topic is good for people to learn more about it, and that people should be every day less ignorant, and medicine for this is the reading of issues like this
hello, i would like to read more about this interesting topic beacuase it is really interesting.
This cannot really work, I feel so.
hey I was reading your post and then I read that that article you mentioned caught your eye, so I had to go and read it to see why it caught your attention because I am very curious and it did the same to me
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