{"id":3602,"date":"2013-09-28T14:44:56","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T14:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3602"},"modified":"2013-09-28T14:44:56","modified_gmt":"2013-09-28T14:44:56","slug":"matt-labrum-high-school-coach-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3602","title":{"rendered":"Matt Labrum, high school coach of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I hereby nominate Matt Labrum as U.S. high school football coach of the year.<\/p>\n<p>Labrum&#8217;s team hasn&#8217;t won more games than any other team. It hasn&#8217;t piled up more points or done anything extraordinary on the field. No. Labrum has earned high praise for something he did for his players because of some off-the-field behavior that Labrum deemed inappropriate.<\/p>\n<p>He suspended his team until they had earned the right to take the field for homecoming week.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/blogs\/highschool-prep-rally\/utah-coach-suspends-entire-team-over-poor-discipline-104153969.html<\/p>\n<p>Labrum coaches the varsity team at Roosevelt High School in Union, Utah. The players had been showing poor attitudes, a poor work ethic and many of the players had gotten entangled in allegations of cyber-bullying of other young people. <\/p>\n<p>Labrum&#8217;s response? He suspended the entire team. He told them in the locker room. The players reportedly left the locker room in tears. Their lives were &#8220;shattered,&#8221; their dreams dashed.<\/p>\n<p>Too bad for that, Labrum said. He looked at the response as an affirmation of the tough love he was administering. &#8220;We looked at it as a chance to say, &#8216;Hey, we need to focus on some other things that are more important than winning a football game,'&#8221; Labrum told the Deseret News. &#8220;We got an emotional response from the boys. I think it really meant something to them, which was nice to see that it does mean something. There was none of them that fought us on it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what I think ought to happen: Every coach in America, in every sport at any level of competition should rip a page out of Matt Labrum&#8217;s &#8220;playbook&#8221; that deals with how to handle athletes who misbehave. I realize it&#8217;s too much to ask those who coach professional athletes to do this, but those who coach &#8220;student-athletes&#8221; have a model to emulate.<\/p>\n<p>If there was an award for coaches who enact this kind of action against their own team, then it ought to have Matt Labrum&#8217;s name on it.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s my choice for U.S. high school football coach of the year.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I hereby nominate Matt Labrum as U.S. high school football coach of the year. Labrum&#8217;s team hasn&#8217;t won more games than any other team. It hasn&#8217;t piled up more points or done anything extraordinary on the field. No. Labrum has earned high praise for something he did for his players because of some off-the-field behavior &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3602\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Matt Labrum, high school coach of the year<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1221,2955],"class_list":["post-3602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cyber-bullying","tag-matt-labrum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}