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Piling on Western Guilford?

After Hornets girls soccer coach George Kennedy publicly questioned his players' effort following an 8-0 loss in the state semifinals this week, we started hearing in the comments section and later by e-mail from some people who thought it wasn't appropriate to pile on the team after such a tough loss and such a great season. Here's what one e-mailer wrote:

I read Tom Keller's May 28 article on Western High's women's soccer state semi-final with rapidly increasing and substantial dismay. In my view, Mr. Keller allocated a great deal of the available space to enabling a selfish and minority view, albeit from a key source, Western's coach, Mr. George Kennedy. As a decade long fan of the Western High athletics program, I was happy to attend Wednesday evening's state semi-final. In addition to supporting the hornets, I looked forward to seeing Jacksonville-White Oak, the three-time defending state champions. I will suggest with great confidence that the result of the game was more about the soccer talent, general athleticism, conditioning, and finely honed tactics of Jacksonville's lady vikings than about any lack of effort on the part of any Western players. Mr. Kennedy certainly has the right, and obligation for that matter, to speak with any of his players about a perceived lack of effort. The time and place to do so should be private. Instead, Mr. Kennedy, with the help of Mr. Keller, used the News and Record to express tremendously negative opinions about the efforts of a group of young ladies that deserved much better. In my view, the News and Record has always reported results for the area's student-athletes with the positive tenor that high school sports deserve. What happened here?

What do you think? Should Coach Kennedy have made those comments publicly? Should I have repeated them in the article? I can tell you it wasn't like this was 30 seconds of a 20-minute interview taken out of context. There aren't many ways for a coach to sugarcoat an 8-0 loss.

I believe we do try to highlight the positive side of what's going on in the vast, vast majority of cases. These are, after all, teenagers playing for little more than the love of the game. They don't have multi-million dollar contracts to justify. But they are representing something bigger than themselves when they put on that uniform, and when Coach Kennedy, one of the longest-tenured and, in my dealings, most genuine coaches in the area tells me he didn't feel like his team fulfilled that responsibility to the best of its ability, I have a hard time pretending I didn't hear it. Here was my response to that e-mailer:

Thank you for taking the time to write in. This was a very unsatisfying story on many levels, mostly because it was such an unsatisfying result. I have spoken with Coach Kennedy many times before, and he has always struck as me as one of the most knowledgeable and honest coaches in the area. He is certainly one of the best advocates for his players, being one of very, very few coaches to e-mail me throughout the season when good things happen. I spoke with him for at least 20 minutes following the White Oak loss, and it was clear that he was disappointed more by the way in which his team was defeated than by the result. Certainly, sometimes 100% effort isn’t enough against a team as skilled as White Oak. But when Coach Kennedy, who presumably knows these girls better than anyone but their families, says he’s disappointed in the way his program represented itself, I have to take him at his word.

Trust me, I was hoping to write a winning story, as well. But my obligation is to convey what happened as accurately as possible. On this night, that was not a fun job.