Update on Grimsley baseball…..

I just left Grimsley High School and I spoke at length with Whirlie athletic director Lewis Newman.

As of 2:53 this afternoon, Mr. Newman assures me that Alan Ashkinazy is still the baseball coach at Grimsley. Newman and Ashkinazy did have a meeting last week but that was the end of the year evaluation meeting that Lewis Newman has with all of his Grimsley coaches.

As far as the recruiting questions go, Mr. Newman says there were no Illegally Recruited baseball players at Grimsley last season and that every player on the Whirlie team was living legally in the Grimsley district.

If any questions about players not living in the Grimsley district and playing baseball for the Whirlies last season came up, Mr. Newman visited the players’ homes as many times as deemed necessary and sat in the chairs in the homes of the players and checked into every possible instance and there were no problems/no illegal cases, period.

We did our invstigation and that closes the case at least for today. We will continue to try and get you all the information on this topic that we can and we will try to be first with the details and if we aren’t, then we will keep on trying.

Kevin Fleming, the Grimsley principal, will be leaving the school on June 30. A new principal is due in place for the Whirlies on July 1.

Off the subject of baseball and on to football, Grimsley and Eastern Guilford will have a 7on7 scrimmage on the Grimsley campus today at 6pm and helmets will be worn be all participants. There will be at least three more Grimsley 7on7 scrimmages coming up within the next 10 days. Football practice can officially start for the high schools on July 31.

Also on the football side of things, Will Newman, one the state’s top rising senior HS football players and the son of Grimsley AD Lewis Newman, is very busy visiting colleges this summer. Among those interested in the quarterback’s services are:East Carolina, Wake Forest, Army(West Point), Deleware, Duke, North Carolina, Wofford, Elon, and Appalachian.

11 thoughts on “Update on Grimsley baseball…..

  1. Thanks Andy! This should clear things up for all the dis-grutled posts there have been out there toward Coach A!
    If someone wants to “legally” move to any particular school district,(whether it’s Grimsley, Northwest or Ragdale….) your kid should not be ridiculed or penalized.

  2. not an angle, just a fact. many of the negative posts about the ghs baseball program are smokescreens for my kid isnt playing enough and its not fair that other kids have made the choice to attend ghs and have bumped my kid down the depth chart. at some point there has to be recognition by parents and players that limited playing time has to do with other players being able to help the team win more than their kid can. high school coaches want to win and 99% of the time will field the team that best helps achieve that goal. its really not too complicated. acknowledgement of this leads to several conclusions on kids and parents part: accept role and work hard to improve, transfer to less competitive program, quit.

  3. Andy,

    Why are you feeling so threatened that you deleted my reasonably-stated opposing comment below? That’s what a blog is all about–to discuss issues in a civilized manner. I can only guess that you do not have confidence in your point of view–otherwise you would leave this comment up and repost all my other very fair comments that you deleted.

    “its’ comical-
    It is comical that you continue to use the “disgruntled parent” angle to bolster your argument. I am long gone from those days and I have no animosity toward anyone and I have no desire to attack anyone.

    My comments about conflicts of interests regarding sports businessmen who serve as high school coaches and fathers who serve as coaches for their sons’ high school teams stand on their own merit. GCS would be wise to pay attention to those issues.

    Here’s hoping Andy does not delete one more opposing view comment. As let_us_talk said, he needs to be intellectually honest in this blog.”

  4. And yes, I agree that the kids and their parents who are complaining about not having enough playing time need to get over it. It’s all about who works hard. There’s no room for whining in baseball or any other sport. Get better or get out.

    However, my initial point still stands: GCS should institute rules for all high schools so that GCS does not have situations with inherent conflict of interest, such as sports businessmen or players’ fathers coaching teams. Those are just two examples–there may be more in other GCS schools. I’m sure the coaches mentioned in these several blogs have done a fine job–however, that is not the issue. Many organizations have rules about conflicts of interests.

  5. I’m not sure we are really getting anywhere with this topic but if there is a conflict of interest how do you suggest getting around it. From all indications the Guilford County School system does not have an over-abundance of teachers who want to or who are qualified to coach.

    It’s always been about finding the best possible coach who will put the best possible team on the field. The schools want winners. Look at the situation at Smith in football. They change coaches every year in an attempt to find a winner. Page had a situation a few years back where they were losing so they changed coaches and now they are winning again.

    A gentleman with the Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department told me yesterday that football drives the athletic programs at the high schools and in a sense he is right.

    Northern Guilford was building a new football program and they went out of state to find their coach. Of the three main sports at Northern, football, basketball, and baseball, none of the coaches teaches at the school. The football coach is retired from the South Carolina system and the other two coaches are local businessmen.

    Back to baseball, one of the local assistant coaches in the Guilford County system works with Impact Baseball and other coaches help with travel teams. Overall it’s gonna be tough to get around all the conflict of interests and still field all of the teams if the fans want winners. If not, we will head into the direction of more kids not playing school ball at all and they will just play solely for Club or Travel teams. In that case the school teams just become more like developmental or intramural teams.

    The recreation teams are supposed to the developmental squads and the HS varsity teams were designed to be the advanced level of play.

    I am not here to call out any names but it is already hard to find coaches for the schools and it will probably get harder before it gets easier. Currently in Guilford County we do not have a system Superintendent or a county Athletic Director.

    Good topic that has to be handled carefully.

  6. dr sense, 1st i’ll address your main point. is there a conflict of interest with alan a. and being coach at ghs? some may perceive that to be the case, but i hold an opposing opinion. the key question to answer is, are kids required to workout at gbc to have a chance to play at ghs? the answer to that is a resounding “no.” if the answer were “yes” there would be a conflict of interest. as i stated earlier, hs coaches want to win games and will put the best players on the field to accomplish that goal.

    my main point is to address the question of why a number of parents at ghs want to have alan a. removed as baseball coach. so why is that??? lack of playing time for their kids???

  7. Thank you for responding, Andy.

    It may be difficult to find coaches without conflicts of interests. It may not. GCS should rise to this challenge–they should not assume that the high schools have to accept candidates who have inherent conflicts of interest. It’s unconscionable to place people in such indefensible positions. In the long run, heading off conflicts of interest is in everyone’s best interest.

  8. dr sense, please elaborate on what you believe to be a conflict of interest regarding ghs baseball. Please give a real or hypothetical example.

    As stated previously, there is no requirement to workout at gbc in order to play for ghs. some starters at ghs do work out at gbc, others do not. Kids that workout at gbc or ncba or proehlific are probably getting better and improving their chances of contributing to team success. However, there may be some kids that work hard to get better, but still have limited roles. Sometimes the ability deficit is large enough that even a significant amount of hard work doesn’t bring a kid up to the contributor level. That’s life at a competitive baseball program. That’s life in a competitive world. Here’s my key point again: those who can contribute to winning baseball games will play. HS baseball coaches, or any sport’s coaches, want to win and they will put the kids on the field that will best help accomplish that goal.

  9. northerns football coach did teach this year, he taught civics and economics. but your right the other two northern coaches did not teach

  10. why not treat athletics like we treat academics and let the kids go where they can get the best athletic training the same as letting them go to a school where the parents think they can get the best academic training? In Forsyth County you can go where you want by paying $1,000.

Comments are closed.