Public School Coach
I was a public high school coach for forty years. Like it or not, I knew the kind of influence I had over my teams. If I got mad, they got scared. If I “lost my head”, they certainly would lose theirs. My teams looked to me to understand how to handle both the good and the bad. And that wasn’t always about winning and losing. Teammates and coaches died, best friends let us down, our sports were cut. My job was to help “my kids” deal with the loss, the sadness, and the disappointment, as well as the joy. Part of that was to learn to deal with it all myself.
Don’t get me wrong, winning and losing were important, and emotional. The “highs” of winning were “tight”, all the negatives dropped away from that moment. And the “lows” of losing were often tempered by the fact we shared them together. But the “real” life and death situations were soul changing. I’ve never felt so close to a group of athletes and coaches as I did with a candle in my hand on our track, saying goodbye to a coach, or as we returned from our teamates’ funerals to compete in a meet.
When I wanted to punch the locker room door, I did it when the kids weren’t around. And when I wanted to drink a toast (or two) to my lost coach, I didn’t do it with my team. There were things that were appropriate to share with those impressionable young athletes, and there were things that were not. They were personal.
Kennedy v Bremerton School District
The Christian conservatives on the United States Supreme Court gave a “wink and a nod” to a public high school coach from the state of Washington this week. God bless that man, Coach Kennedy. He’s a devout Christian, so devout, that after his team’s football game he felt called to go out onto the field and kneel in prayer. And he did it as the kids were still on the field, and the crowds were still in the stands. He believed that he was exercising his First Amendment right to practice his religion in the way he found appropriate, just as professional player Tim Tebow knelt in the end zone after scoring a touchdown.
But there’s a difference between Tebow and Kennedy. Tim Tebow was a private citizen, employed as a quarterback in the privately owned NFL. The coach is a public employee, hired to coach a public school football team.
Until last week, the Supreme Court had a firm standard, set in Engle v Vitale in 1962. I remember when that case was decided. Until then, Mrs. Meyers led us Clifton Elementary School second graders in the Lord’s Prayer each morning, right before we stood up and Pledged Allegiance to the flag. I’m not sure any of us really understood what “pledging allegiance” meant, nor asking for our “trespasses” to be forgiven. But then, one day, we no longer were saying the Lord’s Prayer, nor were we given an hour of the school day to walk down to the nearby Episcopal Church for Bible study lessons.
Teaching Religion
Mrs. Meyer couldn’t “instruct or lead” us in religious education. If we wanted that, we should go to Annunciation School, the Catholic elementary just down the road. That was because Mrs. Meyers was employed by the Cincinnati Public Schools, and the city government didn’t have a place in determining or instructing us in religion. They could teach us about religion, but they couldn’t help us to practice a religion.
Years later as a social studies teacher I was very aware of that distinction when I taught “world religions”. We went through all of the tenets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism. We talked about what “they” believed, even to the Jewish and Christian and Buddhist kids in the classroom who were the “they”. One Buddhist parent thanked me for explaining it to his kid. I guess I got it right, or at least, I was on the “middle path”.
But I did not analyze “right” or “wrong”, what was “fact” and what was “myth”. I simply stated what the tenets of the faiths were.
The Problem
So what’s so wrong with Coach Kennedy, following his calling out onto the game field, and giving thanks to his Lord for a well-played game? Nothing – unless his players, his “kids”, interpret that as part of their “team” activities. Football is a tough sport. Unlike my beloved Track and Field, where performance is objectively measured in seconds and inches, getting to start in Football is all about the coaches. It’s their subjective decision. If you’re fifteen and want to get on the field, then you don’t want to “piss off” the coach.
Every kid knows that. And so does every athlete who grew up in inter-scholastic sports. That includes high school football team captain John Roberts, and football and basketball player Bret Kavanaugh. Even Justice Samuel Alito ran track.
So when your coach goes on the field, by himself, to pray, he doesn’t have to “order” anyone to join him. His kids want to follow him, want to be a part of what he does. And even if they aren’t sure about the whole “praying” thing, they want to be “in good” with coach. They want to be with their buddies, and they want to be in the lineup. Who wants to “stand out” as the kid who didn’t go?
His Right, Our Dime
The Supreme Court gave a “wink-wink” to Coach Kennedy. They agreed that he was just expressing his individual right to his religion. He could have expressed it in his office, or at his car, or in the dark field after the lights were off and the kids were gone. There were many nights when I walked the track – alone – not to commune with my maker, but to savor the moment, or lower my blood pressure. But Kennedy didn’t. Wink-Wink, he was just talking to his God, in private; under the lights, with his team, other teams, and fans in the stand. And they were talking with him. A coach is a leader. And Coach Kennedy was leading all of them in a religious action.
And it was all on the government payroll, essentially “sponsored” by the Bremerton School District.
In Law School, we learned to take an event, and alter “one thing” to see if we could get the same result. It was called the “what ifs”. What if Coach Kennedy had rolled out a prayer rug and bowed to the East in Islamic Prayer? What if, instead of the Lord’s Prayer, the chant was, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare”? Are his actions still, OK?
Wink-Wink.
