by gbdriver80 » Wed May 06, 2015 5:00 pm
Before I say anything, please note that the following views are my own and do not reflect anyone else’s views – whether it be Sidney High School, my players, my fellow “no” voters, David (who people may assume since I played for him we always agree, which is not true), or Michael (who people may assume since we are related we always vote the same, which is not true).
I am not sure whether the ballots sent to Greg on his position through Google were secret or not but regardless, I have no problem saying that I was one of the “no” votes this year. After several things I viewed as problems this year, I felt that I could in no way give Greg a vote to continue in this position. Now do I hope things change this year and he can continue? Yes, absolutely because there are several things Greg brings to the position that no one else probably would; however, there were also many problems over the course of this year leading to my “no” vote.
1) The sealing aspect for my vote was OAC State this past weekend. In my opinion, the most important aspect of the head of the committee’s job is the running of the state tournament. As a committee member, there were a few times this weekend when I was embarrassed to be known as such due to absolutely inexcusable problems with the execution of the tournament that easily would have been preventable. At the meeting this spring, I was told that a group of six readers were approved; however, the group reading on Saturday was not the same six. While I understand some of those six may have had other obligations arise, the replacements were never run by the committee to be okayed and on sight Saturday morning, I knew two of the six were nowhere near the caliber of reader that should be allowed to read matches at the OAC State Tournament. This led to several problems throughout the day. I am not one to argue with readers no matter how poorly they are doing their job because I know they are volunteers and trying their best; however, I had to do so very heatedly and publicly twice this weekend during the same game as the rules were not being followed during the match leading to much confusion for both teams. The second major problem that I witnessed was a reader telling a team that had a buzzer malfunctioning that they would just have to play without that buzzer for the remainder of the game because there was not an extra (there were numerous sets not in use at the time). Furthermore, because of the obvious buzzer malfunction one word into the question (if you moved the buzzer at all, it buzzed instantly without being pushed), the reader wanted to disqualify the other team from the question, at which point I stepped in and said I was perfectly okay with them still answering the question because they did absolutely nothing wrong. Finally, I am not sure what was said in the readers’ meeting run by Greg, but either it was told to the readers wrong or not emphasized properly that ALL protests would be heard regardless of the outcome of the match as total points could decide who gets to play for a state title or not.
2) At the spring meeting, Greg was very adamant on wanting OAC State next year to fall on the same weekend as History Bowl Nationals. I cannot buy into any line of thinking that would allow this to happen. And before I continue, if you are worried this might actually happen, I assure you it will NEVER happen as a majority of the OAC Committee members have vowed that they would never okay a date conflict like that. What Greg’s motivations were for pushing that agenda, I cannot speak to, as no one but Greg knows his thoughts but it would be hard to believe that other obligations (to NAQT) or past frictions (with History Bowl) did not play at least a small role in the initiative. As many members of the committee have noted, we hope to never have to go against History Bowl or SSNCT again; however, no small school has qualified for OAC State in as many years as I can remember, whereas many state title contenders attend History Bowl every year. Please do not take that as me advocating for a conflict with SSNCT – I am not – I am just noting it is much more okay than any conflict with History Bowl would ever be.
3) The bull-ish demeanor Greg has on adding regionals also turns me off, as we simply do not have the teams to do it and have a system that works very well right now. The state tournament format would need to be completely overhauled, two additional sites and hosts would have to be found for regionals (and for those of you who have been around a while, you know how hard it has been to finally get six running appropriately as it just happened in the past few years), and there are simply not enough teams registering yet to justify it. However, Greg has made this his number one initiative again and again since becoming head of the committee despite pushback from at minimum many of the members. That is not to say Greg’s vision may not be a future plan but it is nowhere near coming to fruition and needs to stop being called into question at every meeting again and again. Especially by bringing other coaches to the meeting to be added to the committee as soon as we create a new regional in their area. I am obviously all for coaches not on the OAC Committee coming to meetings and participating in the dialogue; however, it is blatantly irresponsible to pitch such a person as a future committee member at that time as the merits of said person cannot appropriately be discussed in front of them. And once again, please do not think we as the committee just throw people to the wayside that might disagree with us – we do not. I simply want to make sure anyone being added is thoroughly vetted first and is not going to bring back the days of uninvolved coaches making decisions for the state when they only attend one tournament a year and never interact with coaches and players around the state.
I know that to some people, some of these things may not seem like big issues but to me, they are, and something I need (and hope) will be fixed in the future so that next time this question comes around I can vote “yes.”
Also, with my resignation from Sidney, please do not think my “no” vote was in any way angling for Greg’s position since I will be unaffiliated with any team next year – I made it very clear to the other committee members that were voting no (and at least one that was voting yes) that even if Greg were not renewed, I would not be interested in the position.
Joe Czupryn
OAC Committee Executive Director
Sidney Coach 2012-2015
Northmont Assistant Coach 2008-2011
Northmont '08