Pacing the sidelines of the court, the coach grimaces and flashes looks of anger. Every play is punctuated with a shout to one player or another. The coach’s pointer finger is in the air, screaming direction to a player.
After losing a game, the coach yells some more off the court. The players need to find the strength inside themselves. They need to not be so weak, so worthless. They need to prove what they yell back at the coach, that they have what it takes.
Is there something inherently wrong with the above, fictional scenario? Not necessarily.
Oregon women’s basketball coach Jody Runge has taken a lot of heat in the last week — in The Register-Guard, over the office water coolers and at bars all over town. In some cases, it’s been more than just heat Runge has received, it’s been the very fires of hell. The Emerald editorial board suggests that maybe not all the criticism is fair, at least not yet.
Certainly, the stories — heard both publicly and privately — of player mistreatment at the hands of Runge is worrisome. Coaches need to push; athletes, especially younger athletes learning what it is to play sports, need to have their limits tested and their weaknesses exposed so they can fight past it to excellence.
But it is plain wrong to suggest that coaching is somehow a license to treat someone as less than human. Simple human respect demands that athletes, no matter their age or their skill level, be treated with dignity. That doesn’t mean that a coach should be soft and yielding with players. It does mean that there is a line of love and decency that cannot be crossed, especially by someone in a position of authority and influence, such as a coach.
The problem, though, is that no one except the players (and they’re not talking on the record) really knows whether or not that line has been crossed. Certainly, the fact that players felt the need to meet with Athletic Director Bill Moos to vent their frustrations indicates that Runge is doing something wrong. But we don’t know which players went to Moos (as least not on the record), we don’t know how many of them had such strong feelings or how many of them were there simply present as a show of support. And we don’t know how reliable their testimony is.
Really, the public knows very little, yet a healthy chunk of that public seems to want to lynch Runge now, rather than wait for more information to be gathered. And that’s not treating her with respect. One can’t help but wonder if there aren’t other issues causing such immediate bad vibes to be thrown at Runge. No matter what it is she thinks she’s doing with her players, perhaps Runge is going about it the wrong way.
Maybe her methods, not her purpose, are what prompted sports columnist Ron Bellamy of The Register-Guard to say Runge’s already as good as gone. Reading Bellamy’s column last week, there was a feeling that perhaps he hopes the Runge era is over more than it actually is over.
On the other hand, Runge’s win-at-all-costs approach to revitalizing the University’s women’s basketball program may have led her to mistreat her players. And that may not be all her fault, but also the Athletic Department’s and college sports’ fault more generally.
So perhaps the next meeting that should take place is between the players and University President Dave Frohnmayer. Maybe they should complain to Frohnmayer that college athletics’s focus on winning above all else has resulted in mistreatment of them. This is a college, after all; where is the focus on developing these women into well-rounded human beings? In all of the discussion of Runge, her ability to produce a winning team has been trumpeted above most everything else. What about her ability, or lack thereof, to nurture athletes and to develop young women into adults? And what of the pressure to perform or be fired? Surely Runge’s often-contentious relationship with the Athletic Department has upped the ante on winning.
All of the information isn’t in yet, folks. The verdict on Runge should be stayed until more evidence can be produced. Unless there’s a total meltdown in the situation, the verdict is stayed through at least Saturday’s NCAA Tournament game against Iowa.
On Wednesday, the Emerald will comment more on Runge’s position in the community and her role as a female coach, to examine some of the other issues that determine if she’s really so bad or if she deserves the benefit of the doubt. Until we all know more, the University community should offer her some human understanding.