Young Harris lacrosse

[Check ur vm]

Sad to learn Young Harris has canceled the rest of the 2020 season.

[WhiteCarrera]

Wow - hard to know what’s been going on, but this is an interesting statement. Hopefully someone with some insight can fill us in.

https://yhcathletics.com/news/2020/3/4/ ... ogram.aspx

[Laxwarrior]

found this online: https://yhcathletics.com/news/2020/3/4/ ... ogram.aspx

Assistant Director of Athletics for Sports Communications

Story LinksYOUNG HARRIS, Ga. | The following is a statement from Young Harris College President Drew Van Horn, Ph.D., concerning the men's lacrosse program:
Athletic teams can be complex, especially when a new leader is brought in to coach a team that he or she did not recruit. After a competitive and rigorous search process, Young Harris College selected Jay Goldsmith to change the existing culture of our Men's Lacrosse program. When a new coach enters an existing culture that he or she has been tasked to change, the choice for the student-athlete is not complicated: either the student-athlete will play under the new culture or will not.

Unfortunately, in the case of our Men's Lacrosse program, it has become obvious to me that the old culture is unwilling to adapt to the new coach and his system. After careful thought and observation, Director of Athletics Jennifer Rushton and I decided that it was not fair to ask Coach Goldsmith to expend his emotional, mental and physical energy with a group of student-athletes that has communicated and exemplified its unwillingness to adapt. Therefore, effective immediately, I am canceling the remainder of the Men's Lacrosse season.

Young Harris College takes all accusations of abuse and harassment seriously. There is a formal process for filing a complaint, and our Title IX team reviews the complaint. As of today, we have not received any formal complaints from any individual associated with the Men's Lacrosse Team. An initial investigation into a list of concerns has occurred and has not verified any acts of negligence, abuse, or mistreatment. If any formal complaints are filed, the College will follow its policy of incident investigation by Title IX standards.

[WhiteCarrera]

As long as they had the bus that wasn’t going to be used, they may as well throw the players under it!!

[jakester]

A friend of mine has a son on the team and he said that basically the reader's digest version is a new coach came into the program at the beginning of the year. There were some issues that were felt by some of the players. They brought it to the AD and then it blew up with parents getting involved, people saying lawyers were involved, and on and on. So the president decided that the program will be canceled for the remainder of the season. The coach will not be fired (which is what some of the players and parents wanted) and he will decide on scholarships for next season by July 1.
All this happened in under 3 DAYS!!!! So understandably my buddy's kid is devastated and it is up in the air what will happen next year.

[Matnum PI]

do you know what the players' grievance was?

[Laxwarrior]

Anyone know what happened to prior coach?

[totc]

Ladies and gentlemen, the TopOfTheCircle.com Third Law of Lacrosse:

Players play. Coaches coach. Officials officiate. Spectators spectate. Administrators administer. Any time someone takes a role outside of their expertise, it constitutes an imbalance in the entire order of the sport.

I'm seeing it too often, these entitled athletes from the pay-to-play environment who are egged on by parents who, because of the pay-to-play culture, feel as though they should have a say in the way the game is played and/or coached.

The administration of Young Harris came down hard. As they should.

[topcat430]

https://twitter.com/DVJB/status/1235630 ... 69824?s=09

[Matnum PI]

This is not the full list but it gives you some idea. And, apparently, the full list was signed by 100% of the team.

[laxmarmot]

While this is bad for the school and the some players, I hope that those that went the "I'LL get a LAWYER" route, learn something. I have been to see games at YHC, nice campus and complex to play on, just sad it came to this end.

[WhiteCarrera]

It's hard for me to believe this couldn't have been worked out by the college. In my book, the only thing that absolves the administration of blame is if the team gave an ultimatum, saying “get rid of him or we won’t play” and the school essentially said, “you can't quit, you’re fired!”

Either way, the tone of that announcement is horrible. When the school's statement places blame only on the players, I'm sure they'll be real excited about getting to the bottom of things. Signs of a bullheaded and clueless administration IMHO, but we all know those are out there. Feel sorry for the kids that will lose a year of eligibility over this -- hopefully the NCAA will make some concessions.

[old man]

The blame should always be on the players, short of directly provable illegal activities.

You go to college; you do what your coach tells you to do.
Dont like it? There's the door.


PLain. Simple.

The moment you get mommy & daddy's lawyers involved = you are the problem. {again, short of illegal activities, NOT including "coach was mean to us. he wore hats. he used mean words."}


UNLESS a formal charge + conviction comes against the coach, these players should never garner any public sympathies. THEY blew their opportunity for NCAA lacrosse in the 2020 season.

[McLax]

Wow. Unless the “full list” is a LOT more damning this seems pretty lame.

“Tries to change the way we play” = definition of a coach

When were they the top defense in D2?

“Wears hats” ???

Sad situation, like LM said, great campus good facilities.

They had a pretty good run in 2018 but struggled to get to .500 in 17 and 19. Don’t know the previous coach but sounds like new coach came in and wanted to instill some discipline and consistency to take the next step.

Life is hard sometimes and you might not always love your coach/boss but ...

Team mutiny doesn’t seem like the smart play

[shaadb-man]

I was surprised to see this as their reasoning for wanting a new coach and kind of goes to show how delusional they are. Best D in D2?!?! What are they talking about Unless there is further more I think the school did the right thing, I'm actually at a lost and am embarrassed for the parents who raised these men. From what I understand and correct me if I am wrong but not only did they all sign a petition, which should alone end the season as there is no coming back from that, they also stopped practicing... Wow. What did they think would be the end result?


One of the big problems today is parents doing everything for their kids, they don't let them fail and learn how to deal with adversity through failure. It's ok to fail that is how you learn to be stronger and I don't know if these guys know how to deal with adversity very well.

simple note from the goat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3NEQdqA48Y

[RedFromMI]

Wow. Unless the “full list” is a LOT more damning this seems pretty lame.

“Tries to change the way we play” = definition of a coach

When were they the top defense in D2?

“Wears hats” ???

Sad situation, like LM said, great campus good facilities.

They had a pretty good run in 2018 but struggled to get to .500 in 17 and 19. Don’t know the previous coach but sounds like new coach came in and wanted to instill some discipline and consistency to take the next step.

Life is hard sometimes and you might not always love your coach/boss but ...

Team mutiny doesn’t seem like the smart play

Given the level of their opponents, they may have deluded themselves about their level of defense, but they were never in the category of a Le Moyne, Merrimack, Adelphi, Limestone, Mercyhurst, or Tampa. I perused the scores for the seasons back to 2017 and they were letting in a dozen plus goals multiple times per season, and not always to good teams...

[Laxwarrior]

Here are the 2019 stats for defense.

YHC #40 out of 70

https://stats.ncaa.org/rankings/change_sport_year_div

[Gorilla Fan]

Forever known as the team who couldn’t handle a change in regime...

Lawyers, parents, players...

That is Young Harris

[pridelax13]

The list of grievances is an absolute joke.

"Tried to change the way we play"-you guys were 6-7 last year, 13-4 in 2018 (but got smoked by the good teams on their schedule), and 7-8 in 2017. You needed to change the way you played to become successful.

"Wears hats"-so do 85% of other college coaches. Is this serious?

"Top D in D2 to 3rd worst"-no idea what this means but in way shape or form was Young Harris a top D in D2.

From people in the know, it is very clear the previous coaching staff let players get away with whatever they wanted. No accountability in the program at all. New coach comes in to a terrible situation (doesn't start until after fall has ended) will little time to get things going before spring practice. He tries to implement cultural and schematic changes. Players push back against the change and then parents helicopter in as well.

For the people complaining the players are getting thrown under the bus-they should! They weren't happy to be held accountable and refused to come to practice. School did an investigation and found no evidence or Title IX violations or abuse. I applaud the school for actually having a coaches back and standing up to parents who complained.

[Matnum PI]

For what it's worth, that list was a scrap paper list used to make a list of grievances before creating the actual list that they submitted to the AD. Also, this is an ongoing legal case so it's entirely possible that the grievances were more real than many in this thread are recognizing. Bottomline, we don't have all the information.