Tag Archives: Kori Clements.

local news, Sports news

‘Little League Moms’ need to be called out

I refer to them as “Little League Moms.” Actually, the term also applies to zealous fathers who want the best for their pride and joy.

Amarillo appears to have such a Little League Mom who took it upon herself — allegedly — to tell a high school varsity coach how to do her job. The coach didn’t like it. So she quit a seriously good job as head coach of the Amarillo High School volleyball team, one of the most vaunted such programs in Texas.

I am referring, of course, to young Kori Clements, a 2006 AHS grad who took over for a legendary coach, Jan Barker, who retired at the end of the previous season.

I truly don’t know everyone’s side of this story. I only have read Clements’ resignation letter. She claims the parent of one of her athletes harassed her because the coach wasn’t playing the parent’s daughter enough. Clements argued in her resignation letter that she always seeks to put the best athletes she has on the floor. The object, of course, is to win volleyball matches.

Maybe the community will hear the other side of it, if there’s another side worth telling. I understand that the Amarillo Independent School District athletic community is all riled up over this resignation. The school district has put Clements on temporary “administrative leave,” meaning she’ll get paid even though she’s no longer coaching.

This kind of story can get ugly. I hope it doesn’t regress to the point of sheer ugliness. We’re venturing back to Amarillo this week for a brief visit. Thus, I plan to attend the AISD board meeting Tuesday night. I want to see this matter play out from a ringside seat.

If the parent in question is the person generally believed to be involved in this mess, then the individual might have some serious explaining to do, given her position in the school community.

Make no mistake about this point, too: Disputes involving adults — parents and coaches — almost always inflict their share of collateral damage.

I refer to the children. So very sad.

education news, local news

Yes, there’s another side to this coaching kerfuffle

I’m going to give credit where it’s due.

The Amarillo Globe-News has sought to put the burgeoning coaching kerfuffle at Amarillo High School into some much-needed perspective. In an editorial posted/published today, the AGN notes that we’ve only one side of the story involving the sudden resignation of Kori Clements, the head coach of the vaunted Sandies volleyball program. She resigned as coach of the one of Texas’ premier high school athletic programs after just a single season.

Read the AGN editorial here.

Clements has cited parental interference involving the playing time of one of the student-athletes under charge; the athlete is the daughter of the parent. Clements alleged in her resignation letter that the parent’s harassment was too much for her to handle and that the school district administration didn’t give her the support she believes she needs and deserves.

Has the school district responded? No. It is standing behind its policy of declining to comment on a personnel matter.

I, too, am interested in hearing the whole story. The offending parent — who allegedly is a member of the Amarillo Independent School District Board of Trustees — likely will feel the heat from constituents to explain her side of the story.

I’ll just offer this bit of perspective, admittedly from some distance: It is that Coach Clements’ assertion has exposed both the parent — and her daughter — to an embarrassing circumstance. If the coach is as highly regarded as many parents have said she is — and I have no reason to disbelieve anything I’ve heard so far — it seems impossible for me to believe she would throw out a reckless accusation without it having some basis in fact.

The AISD school board will meet Tuesday night. I am waiting for some more disclosure on what happened and hoping for a resolution that satisfies as many people as is humanly possible.

local news, Sports news

Might the coach reconsider? Hmm?

1 Comment

I’m going to throw a bit of blind speculation out there for you to ponder.

Kori Clements quit her post as Amarillo High School’s girls volleyball coach this week, citing harassment and hassling from the parent of one of her athletes. Clements said the parent was angry because Clements wasn’t giving her daughter enough playing time for the vaunted Sandies’ volleyball program.

Her resignation — after just one season as coach — has ignited a serious firestorm in the Amarillo school district athletic community . . . or so I have been led to believe.

The Amarillo school board of trustees is meeting Tuesday evening. You can bet your big ol’ four-wheel-drive pickup that Clements’ sudden and shocking resignation will be on the minds of what I suspect will be a large crowd of spectators crammed into the school board meeting room.

Is it possible that Clements could get some form of public apology from the school board, perhaps even from the offending parent? Maybe from the administration, which she accused of failing to give her proper backing?

If all that comes to pass, might the young coach reconsider her resignation?

Just thinking out loud, man.

local news, Sports news

Amarillo is showing how it is so ‘tightly bound’

The beans apparently have been spilled over the identity of the parent who harassed Amarillo High School girls volleyball coach Kori Clements enough to make her quit a plum coaching job after just one season.

Renee McCown, that would be you. Or so it appears.

Oh, brother. This is likel to get ugly. You see, McCown is a member of the Amarillo Independent School District Board of Trustees. It’s bad enough that a meddlesome parent would feel the need to hassle and harass a coach over the decisions the coach makes about giving her athletes playing time. Coach Clements quit because the parent griped incessantly that her daughter wasn’t getting time on the floor during volleyball matches.

The school board is meeting Tuesday. The chatter I’m getting from afar is that many in the community are outraged over the treatment of the coach. The outrage deepens because the person responsible for the messy treatment happens — allegedly — to be someone who most certainly should know better.

That the source of the harassment would be a school board trustee makes this matter even worse than it otherwise would be.

Every now and then you hear about elected officials meddling in administrative matters or worse, in the work of employees who report to the administrators. At City Hall, you might get a council member interfering in, say, police work, going over the head of the city manager and the chief of police. Don’t misunderstand: I am not saying that has happened in Amarillo; I use that example merely to illustrate a point.

School trustees make a single hire: that would be the superintendent. As chief administrator, the superintendent hires all the administrative staffers who report directly to the top person.

In the military, they call it the “chain of command.” One does not dare break that chain by going over and around the people who are responsible for those under their direct supervision.

If what I understand has happened in the relationship between an AISD school trustee and a highly respected high school volleyball coach is true, then we have a serious case of malfeasance — on the part of the trustee — on our hands.

One of two things ought to happen quickly. The trustee needs to apologize publicly and pledge to never interfere again. Or that person needs to resign from public office.