Former BHS athletes debate budget and stipend cuts

Tom Izzo: $3 million. Mike Krzyzewski: $4 million. John Calipari: more than $4 million. MCCSC coaches: $0.

When the decision was made to remove stipends for coaches in the 2010-11 school year due to budget shortfalls, it was unclear what the effects would be on the MCCSC schools’ athletics departments.

Coaches are forced to decide between their teams and their wallets, and many current players and IU athletes with ties to the district’s teams aren’t sure whether they’d be able to make the same choice.

The loss of stipends wouldn’t stop IU softball player Kelsey Brannon from coaching, if she were placed in that situation. 

“At this point, I would coach for free,” Brannon said. “I try to get up to my old high school as much as I can to help them even when we are in season. I enjoy being around the game and being around younger athletes. It helps remind you of your own younger experiences, especially if they were positive ones. ... I want these student-athletes to have a memorable high school sport experience just like I did.”

Brannon spent four years playing varsity softball for Bloomington High School North, and the sophomore has aspirations of eventually becoming a coach. And while Brannon said she might have to reconsider the decision if it didn’t make ends meet financially, as a young coach she would put in the time for free.

Fellow Hoosier Joe Holahan said he agrees with Brannon.

“It would all come down to the opportunity cost of coaching — meaning, would it be worth my time?” Holahan said. “Personally, I would still coach with the pay cut because I would be coaching for the love of the sport and help develop kids into young adults. 

“If I truly wanted money for coaching, I would try to go coach at the collegiate level.”
Holahan is also from Monroe County and spent four years excelling in both cross country and track at Bloomington High School South. He still competes for both sports, but this time in a cream and crimson uniform rather than a purple and gold one.

Holahan’s former South classmate and Indiana quarterback Ben Chappell also believes coaches coach because they love the sport.

“I don’t know the exact dollar amount they are losing by not getting paid for coaching,” Chappell said. “But ... I still think most high school coaches though coach because of passion and not necessarily money.”

INITIAL REACTIONS — AND WILL THE COACHES STAY? 

The public reaction of the MCCSC budget cuts was general shock, as many did not believe the school district would resort to cutting something so important to both the community and the students.

It even came as a surprise to the coaches directly affected by the cuts. 

“At first I assumed that I was just out of the loop on what was going on,” Holahan said when he found out. “But then I talked to my high school coach a few days later only to find out that he was just as surprised as I was. It just seems unfair in the sense that none of the coaches were notified of such a proposal.”

Many of the former North and South and now IU student-athletes initially expressed large concern for the effect this would have on the students currently enrolled.

“I couldn’t believe that our school system had gotten to the point where that was necessary,” Brannon said. “I am worried the kids will suffer from all of this.”

However, not all former Bloomington athletes were as surprised or mystified when they found out about the stipend cuts.

Chappell said that because his mother teaches within the Bloomington system, he knew the corporation was struggling and would be forced to make more budget cuts.

“I guess the people in charge just felt like that was an expense that was expendable,” Chappell said.

Because the fundraising efforts for the $750,000 needed to provide the stipend for all of the extracurricular activities have yet to be completed, it is currently unknown how many of the coaches will stay and how many will choose to go elsewhere.

But a key component to the coaches staying goes beyond the money — it rests with location and their families.

“I think a majority of the coaches will stay mainly because their families and lives are here,” IU soccer player and former South standout Caleb Konstanski said. “I know for a majority of them they are also getting paid either teachers’ salaries or athletic director salaries, which I know are not much, but it’s tough to find any job right now, especially in the coaching/teaching field.”

However, if coaches do stay and their stipends are not provided through fundraisers, they might spend less time working with their athletes.

“I don’t think that they may leave, but just won’t spend as much time in the offseason preparing and working with the athletes,” Brannon said. “They will prefer doing other things, like spending time with their own kids.

“This, in turn, will cause the team to be weaker and not be able to compete as well with others.”

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Athletics and extracurricular activities are a beneficial part of grade school for many students and help some gain scholarships for college. However, the MCCSC situation is tricky — do students leave for a different school or perhaps follow a coach elsewhere? Or, do they stay and potentially lose scholarships due to coaching losses?

For many, the choice to leave simply isn’t an option — and for some, not even something they would consider.

“If I were still in high school, I would stay put right where I was,” Holahan said. “When it comes down to it, school is about academics first, and I could never see myself transferring high schools based on sports — I’m just not a fan of that.”
Brannon echoed Holahan’s sentiments.

“I believe that I would have stayed ... and made the most of the situation,” Brannon said. “If that meant having a parent as a coach, so be it. If we didn’t do as many offseason workouts, I would just work harder on my own.”

But for some, high school might not be the key for getting noticed by universities and other higher academic institutions, Konstanski said. 

“What you do outside of your high school, whether it be club sport, AAU or camps, is really what gets you recognized by college coaches,” he said.

CURRENT BLOOMINGTON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT-ATHLETES

Those currently in the system had quite different reactions to the budget cuts than the college athletes.

Lindsay McKnight, a junior at Bloomington North, was more than worried about the future of her sport. McKnight will be heading into her third year of high school gymnastics minus an assistant coach who chose to leave because of the stipend cuts.

“It was very scary when I heard the salaries had been cut,” Mcknight said. “The one thought that kept running through my head was, ‘What is going to happen to the gymnastics team?’

“I was also wondering ‘Why would they do this?’”

The loss of the coaching stipends affects the gymnastic team on a daily basis more severely than other teams, as there is much more one-on-one work involved with every practice, McKnight said.

This is particularly an issue when spotters are needed, or even when two groups of the eight-member team split up on different apparatuses. The meets will also be different because of the loss of a coach.

“During meets, one coach is writing down scores or running our lines up to the judges, and the other coach is sitting and talking with us while we stretch, and so it will be a big change,” McKnight said. “We will have to probably get more parents involved helping out at meets.”

Unfortunately, because many parents are already involved with the meets, the gymnastics team might struggle to find more volunteers to help with their daily interactions.

But even with these new changes to practices and meets, McKnight has no intention of leaving the program at North.

The stipend cuts will affect the team sports as well, but not quite as much as the individual and smaller sports. And even though they might not be as altered, athletes within the team sports were still shocked to find out.

“Our head football coach at North, Scott Bless, set us all down in the weight room and told us exactly what was happening,” sophomore football player Durrel Hembree said.
“I, along with all the other football players, was stunned when we were told that basically the coaches were being forced to volunteer. Immediately the thoughts poured into my head of the things these coaches have done for us.”

The meeting was to inform the players that none of the coaches would be leaving North, even though they risked not getting paid for their efforts.

“Had any coaches decided to leave the program, that would be a very upsetting thing to hear,” Hembree said. “It would be even more so if they had left, as there is no way we could replace them with zero coaching compensation available.”

While the current removal of stipends has not had a direct change among the coaching staff at North, Hembree said he thinks there could be one in the future. But for now, while the football staff remains intact, he feels bad for sports that were not so lucky.

“I feel like the teachers and coaches that run extracurricular activities have such an impact on young men’s and women’s lives,” Hembree said. “Without that link, some may be lost in translation from middle school to high school.”