The rest is History

Smith? School? Other?

This information can be an albatross around Smith’s neck, especially when he applies for his next coaching job. (It raises so many questions..maybe red flags about his coaching and integrity that may need deeper scrutiny. Yes, just because he didn’t sign the agreement).So I would think smart thinking would have been for Smith to keep/want his reasons for leaving personal/private.

If the school or other entity leaked this information Smith should seek legal advice imo.

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His problem was being “trendy” making Coach Smith closer to modernity than the “Humble and Brilliant.” Higher education, not the local high school, is more on the ball: Case in point–I remember when “‘Cuse”—one syllable– became the jazzier name for a Syracuse (three syllable) basketball team. Oh yes, and a “Fruit” became the mascot (a cute, jolly Orange—the school’s color) ran about making folks cheer—replacing an Indian Warrior with a hatchet.

Change and modernity is a hard thing for some administrators to swallow—its easier to exercise power and “out” the coach. Thanks to Mr. Reardon for this interesting perspective on local high school life

I remember when Kalaheo Principal Moss Ikeda fired then-Coach Merv Lopes back in 1977-78 immediately following a game, after Lopes had apparently defied Ikeda’s directive to not play a certain player who had been suspended by the school administration. It created a huge uproar on campus and in the Kailua community at the time, but in obvious retrospect and with the benefit of hindsight, it’s pretty clear that Ikeda did the right thing. The principal sets and implements school policies, not the basketball coach.

In that regard, we might do well to remember what the late sportswriter Heywood Broun once said about the subject: “Sports do not build character; they reveal it.”

Now, that said, I’m sure I’m not the only alum who has gritted his teeth every time I heard announcers call the team “the Stangs” and reference “Stang Nation.” (Which sounds like “Stagnation,” but I digress.) The name of Kalaheo’s athletic teams is “the Mustangs,” and it has been so for 42 years. Coach Smith and current players and students had no right to unilaterally decide otherwise.

If some people are indeed tired of the name and would like to change it, I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea. But there’s a proper way to accomplish that. This is something we should first discuss publicly, in order to determine whether there is in fact a real consensus amongst students, alumni, faculty (both current and retired), and community members to change the team name of “Kalaheo Mustangs” to something else.

But until that consensus is achieved, school officials cannot allow current coaches, players and students to just change the name of the team on their own and at their whim, simply because it suits them to do so. And there are good reasons why that policy should be so.

First of all, part of the enjoyment of school sports is the idea of maintaining traditions that can link and bond past, present and future generations of students, players and teachers to one another. But more importantly, contemporary tastes and patterns of speech have a remarkable tendency to change over the years, sometimes abruptly so.

Therefore, it’s extraordinarily shortsighted to just change a team’s name in order to reflect present-day vernacular. Sure, “Stang Nation” may sound cool now to current Kalaheo students. But ten or fifteen years from now, future students might well be rolling their eyes at its very mention, the way we did in the 1970s whenever we heard adults use the ‘60s word “groovy.”

Aloha.

i have never seen a worse argument in my life. congratulations.

from another person:
“With all the lawyers in this town, you would think the DOE could have come up with something that was more measurable.”

DOE didn’t write this contract. Kalaheo admin did. Why would the principal hire a lawyer to write a contract and why would Alika Smith hire a lawyer (someone else posted something about this) to fight over a position that literally pays about $600 (maybe) for the entire season?

this is high school sports. moreover, this is the OIA where coaching positions are almost on a volunteer basis in terms of pay. people do it because they love it, not because they have to feed families and pay mortgages. let’s have some perspective here.

another person says:
“Kudos to Alika for standing on his principles and beliefs. ”

and what are these principles and beliefs? what’s the cause of these philosophical differences and why was it so bad that Alika Smith refused to sign this contract? And don’t talk about vague stuff about “The Parents!” and “kids nowadays are soft!” or “it’s too much positivity! back in the good old days, we would beat kids with whips if they missed free throws!”

pretty much EVERY generation before has said that the generation after them was a case of “they don’t make them like they used to.”