You're Only As Good As Your Word
Yeah last week it was a ditty about 94-year-old Sal Del Deo trying to not get booted out of the Provincetown dune shack where he’s been beboppin’ around for 77 years. Now we’ve got the story of Emma Peck who was recruited as a sophomore at Natick High School to play field hockey for UMass Amherst. Coach Barb Weinberg told Emma and her parents that she envisioned Peck becoming her starting center defender—with a 50% scholarship per year.
Emma and her parents were pretty excited about that. But they’re feeling a little betrayed now. First the coach revised the scholarship to 10% the first two years and 50% the last two. Then the coach cut her from the team. Now, the only two ways you can lose your spot on the roster are academic failure or misconduct. Word was Coach Weinberg wanted to shift the scholarship money to players and recruits she preferred. Hey, she wants to win a national championship right? It’s all about winning.
The coach hasn’t even won an Atlantic 10 conference tournament or advanced the team to the NCAA playoffs yet, but UMass has the buckaroos to give her $25,000 raise. And while we’re at it, the UMass football team over the last few years has had expenses outpacing revenues by 40 million taxpayer bucks. They’ve been mocked and called UMess. ESPN called them the second-worst football program in the country. So they’ve got the dough to spend—just not on holding up their end of a scholarship deal to a kid they recruited out of high school.
Hey. you know how to solve this. Keep your word, coach. Now Emma is fighting to retain her scholarship and stay at UMass or it’s gonna be community college for her. Both Emma’s parents are teachers and that’s what she is studying to be. We need all the teachers we can get, Harry the Hat. Here’s an interesting point. NCAA rules bar universities from reducing or taking away athletic scholarships. The new NCAA president is our former Governor Charlie Baker. Time to step in, big boy, and do the right thing.
Keep your dukes up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQEEYL9slM8
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