I’ve already blogged about Henderson County head coach Duffer Duffy’s suspension this past week. Since then, there has been a letter from a player and a letter from Duffer himself to the Henderson Gleaner trying to explain the situation.
But Friday night, the long time broadcaster of the Colonel’s football team stepped down. At half time.
So in the past three week’s Henderson has seen an assistant coach, Tom Duffy, Sr. resign, the head coach, Tom Duffy, Jr. suspended for inappropriate conduct, and the play by play man of 31 years, Henry Lackey quit in the middle of a broadcast. And of course all of this follows the preseason death of player Ryan Owens and the subsequent rumors and accusations of wrongdoing by the coaches.
No one is accusing the coaches or killing Ryan Owens. I don’t think they “worked him to death” in the July sun. I think they were negligent. Criminally negligent? I don’t know. Probably not. But I think they made some big mistakes and have showed no accountability for mistakes they may have made that put Owens in jeopardy.
But there’s an awful lot of red flags popping up in Henderson County. This whole situation fails the smell test.
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What did the play by play man say? Did he just walk off? That had to be awkward.
Where did you find out about the broadcaster? You know he had to have given the listeners an earfull of what he thought about the situation.
Again, I don't think Hendo coaches were or are doing anything much different from any other coaches at other schools. The only problem is that they failed to realize that the few easily documented precautional "recommedations" that the KSHAA passed down for them to document heat indices and such were there in case something tragic happened. It covers them by showing a running tally of the heat.
But admittedly not properly documenting them adds doubt and, following his oddball suspension, more doubt is thrown in with his history of abusive behavior.
However, it does seem to me like everyone involved with the school's end of this situation has no idea how to act about it.
Both of the Duffy's seem to have an arrogance streak as wide as the Ohio River and that's not helping things. Then the superindendant suspends Duffer Duffy for one game because of what he considered to be years of inappropriate treatment of players?
This right after his father, who is an assistant, announces that he's resigning after this season as if an assistant coach resigning is even news even if he used to be the head coach.
All of this stuff is a double edged sword as far as public opinion goes and on top of that it gives off a suspicious vibe.
They figured a suspension would show that the school cares. But then they give a reason that sounds more like a reason to fire someone and instead make it a one game suspension.
Everything would have worked out a little better if they had simply kept everything to themselves and probably waited until the end of the school year to announce things.
In this situation, no news is good news and they are practically fanning the flames.
The accouncement about the play by play guy was in the Gleaner Sunday.
Bratch, you're dead on. Their problem lies in how they're handling everything. Admittedly, there's no handbook on how to deal with this, but when you've got as many strikes against you as the Duffy duo has, then the court of public opinion has you convicted before the charge has been read.
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