The Liberty school board has informed Jeff Kasparie that his services as varsity basketball coach will no longer be needed after the next board meeting in August. Liberty will be in a precarious spot with it being so late in the year and no teaching spots available.
????
How did that happen?
Once again, if this is true, a few mad mommies and daddies run out one of the best young coaches in the state. Once again, major college coaches are not looking at Liberty as their next stop. I only hope this is a bad joke.
If this is true, Liberty's school board has some serious explaining to do. How in the heck do you not rehire a guy who has consistantly won? Let's guess, who's kid didn't get to play? School board president? School board member? People wonder why no one wants to coach for a long period of time anymore, but the answer is simple. Everyone else wants to tell them how to do the job, but not one of those cowards really wants to do it. Maybe they are going in a "different direction." Maybe they are "looking for change." Maybe they are COMPLETELY INSANE! I don't know which of these is correct, but this decision absolutely blows my mind. According to the IHSA website, Kasparie has ammassed a record of 217-108. He's won four regionals, two sectionals, one super and has fininshed fourth in the state of Illinois (which was in the two class system). For pete's sake, the guy is the school's all time winningest basketball coach. If you're telling me that the school board has no more class than to wait until this late in the year to tell this man that they don't want him as their coach anymore, I'll tell you that the school board is full of cowards who obviously have their own agendas. There better be some extremely significant reason behind this decision.
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Charlie Hull
I'll choose to wait for the information to come out before jumping to conclusions..........
Nothing will be official until August, so I suppose that gives the board 30 days to rethink their decision, but I honestly doubt anything will change. I can promise you that the reason has nothing to do with anyone's kid not playing and it is not any personal vendetta by the administration. I can only speak as to what a lot of people have said and to how the players feel and I suppose the official decision will come out at the August board meeting.
Obviously his record speaks for itself, and if this future decision was based solely on that, then the Liberty School Board could be considered completely insane. The problem runs much deeper because Jeff is unable to fulfill his duties as a coach, which is to put those kids as his highest priority. Unfortunately for coaches, even at the high school level, their jobs require them to sacrifice time with their families so they can take care of the kids that they voluntarily signed up to take care of. At this point Jeff has forgot that he signed up for this gig, so if he can't put forth his full effort because of his family, then its time for a change.
Jeff's ever increasing family has caused him to miss several summer events over the past years and his family obligations have caused him to lose focus of his priorities as a basketball coach. He schedules events during the summers, and then expects the parents/ex-players/ or anyone to coach the team while he stays at home to be with his kids. That has upset several players and parents, and while that doesn't seem to be a large enough reason for termination, it is a piece of what has been happening "behind the scenes" over the past few years. Most of the players have grown tired of his lack of attention to the team and his head games that he plays with them (which are beyond motivational) and at this point they have lost all respect for him. Jeff has forgot that part of being a coach is building a strong relationship with the players and showing them that you care about them and being a good role model.
The telling sign will be how many current players or past players will actually show up to protest this decision. Just from being on this forum, I read about the protest behind coach Schuester's termination and how many current/past players were there to defend him with the Hamilton School Board. That tells me that a majority of his current players, past players, and fan base have a great deal of respect for him, which would be the case for a lot of coaches. I have a strong feeling that you won't see that support for Kasparie from past and definitely not from the current crop of players because they don't respect him.
Trust me, everyone believes that when he wants to coach, he can coach with the best of them, but the last few years that motivation seems to be lacking, and the parents are tired of their kids "not" getting the attention that they deserve. The boards responsibility is to represent their district and I can promise you that a lot of parents have complained about his lack of dedication. Hopefully Jeff will realize this is the best for him and his family and that he can get back to coaching once his kids are a little older.
I am not sure what the delay is from the board informing him of their decision last week until making it official in August. Maybe they are going to give him the chance to resign first.
Super Moderator
Wow, I thought the administration in Hamilton were the only retarded people in the area, I guess I have to rethink if this is in fact true. This is starting to get absurd. If it is true, I hope it was for at least cause (which I dont think it probably is).
I know from very good sources that WP was going to wait until the end of June to fire their head basketball coach. Fortunately for him, he found another job offer before it came to that. It is weird that schools are so willing to limit themselves in the search process by waiting so long to make these decisions. I've heard nothing but good things about Liberty administration over the years, so part of me thinks there has to be a good reason for this, probably an under the radar reason that the public will never know about.
I will add that based on what I heard about Liberty's JV last year and personally saw from their junior high teams, whoever the next coach is should be stepping into a situation where he can win immediately.
Wow, that is crazy!
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