Many of you have contacted Kudda expressing outrage on the dirty hits exhibited by the Penn Charter player in a game last week. There has been much discussion on various forums and the general feeling is disgust. The Penn Charter coach, Pat McDonough, did not see the actual hits and is frustrated about the subsequent fallout. He has received emails calling his program “classless”. I know Pat personally as we taught together for several years and know the type of program that he runs up at PC. He’s a standup guy and a coach that wouldn’t tolerate this type of behavior. It wasn’t Kudda’s intent to smear his program but to bring to light the coaches’ responsibility to controlling his players. Kudda removed the videos from this blog as well as from Youtube as we wanted to take the heat off of Pat.
Kudda is hoping that disciplinary action is being taken up at PC against this player. They can not simply ignore what he did. The message needs to be sent that this type of thuggery has no place in HS sports.
Many of you have also questioned the referee’s role in controlling the players. This issue is being investigated by the referee association in the Baltimore area as a result of the video. How could the referees allow this player to remain playing after two devastating and illegal hits? Why didn’t they immediately eject the player? Again, the primary job of the referees is to make sure that the players are safe. (Then you deal with calling the games fairly)
In this situation, the referee’s failed in their primary mission. I also blame the coach for not removing the player. Coach McDonough may not have seen the actual hit, but seeing the aftermath, a player knocked unconscious might raise some questions on the sidelines…someone saw it on the PC sidelines. And after the 2nd player went down? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
The question still to be debated is, ”Is the coach still responsible if they don’t see the play?”
Kudda will stay on this story and as we get results back from PC and the referee association, we’ll be sharing them with our viewers.
