Prep assistants relieved

High school aides avoid ax for now

It’s tough to tell who breathed the bigger sigh of relief when the Lawrence school board handed down budget cuts this summer the assistant coaches who kept their jobs, or the head coaches who would’ve dearly missed the assistants.

With practices set to begin Aug. 19, head and assistant coaches don’t much want to think about what might have been.

Back in April, coaches and administrators were told they might have to eliminate an assistant coach from each sport, but a participation fee and other budget cuts helped save the aides for now.

“It wouldn’t have been ideal, but we’d have made do,” said Lawrence High track coach Jerry Skakal. “It’s easier to talk about now, though.”

Others had a more forlorn outlook if they would have lost an assistant coach.

“If you let them go, then you never get them back,” said Free State High volleyball coach Nancy Hopkins, who has three assistant coaches, two of whom work with the sophomores. Take away a coach, and practice routines get shuffled, travel methods get adjusted and, worst of all, there’s less time spent coaching.

Lawrence High football coach Dirk Wedd, whose staff has five assistant coaches for roughly 90 players, shudders to think about what losing a coach would have meant.

“You have so many minutes to work with each practice,” Wedd said. “If I have to add tight ends with the offensive line, that takes more time. It’s neglecting a position that needs a coach.”

While coaches might grouse about an increase in workload, they uniformly agree it’s the students who suffer the most when assistants get axed.

The Kansas State High School Activities Assn. says the ideal situation is one coach per 12 athletes. That means Wedd, for instance, could use one more coach, not one fewer.

“We’re at least one coach, probably two, less than any other team in the Sunflower League,” Wedd said. “There’s no question it would’ve hurt us greatly.”

Skakal likens losing a coach to increasing class size. For a guy with nearly 130 athletes and only four assistant coaches, he needs all of the coaches he can get.

“Instead of 25 kids in the classroom, it’d be 50,” he said. “The level of education wouldn’t be the same.”

Still, if the Kansas Legislature revisits the budget a distinct possibility depending on November’s elections there’s a chance Lawrence schools might look toward the assistant coaches again.

That’s a tough pill to swallow after more than $3 million worth of budget cuts and fee increases, including a $50 pay-to-play fee for high school athletes.

Both school athletic directors, Free State’s Steve Grant and Lawrence High’s Ron Commons, admit the new fee won’t be popular among athletes and parents, but said it was a necessary step toward keeping coaches and some sports.

“Part of that is helped by that pay-to-play fee the board voted on,” Commons said. “That funding’s going to help alleviate the cost of some of the coaches.”

The fees are expected to generate $110,000 for the high schools, which took sophomore sports off the chopping block as a possible cut. Still, there won’t be intramurals, or eighth- or ninth-grade ‘B’ teams. And cheerleading assistant coaches were released.

Some coaches already try to keep costs low Hopkins’ teams take vans to tournaments and matches, for instance, but without an extra coach, they’d probably be forced to take a bus but acknowledge that installing a fee could hurt overall participation. Instead of letting anyone come out for a sport, the fee may keep the average athlete away.

“I think it could be a third as many kids,” Skakal said. “It’s going to be the death of track and field.”

Every coach in every sport faces the same problem. The students who don’t receive lots of playing time or any playing time, for that matter might just elect to sit out entirely.

Whether more problems arise because of the budget cuts isn’t much of a question; it’s a certainty. How the schools solve the problems that haven’t popped up yet remains the biggest worry.

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” Skakal said. “We’re just going to stumble through it and do the best we can.”