Story Created:
Jan 20, 2010 at 4:44 PM PST
Story Updated:
Jan 20, 2010 at 8:04 PM PST
The father of a Culver City High School senior removed from the school soccer team due to her involvement in a YMCA program says he will have one-on-one talks with the team’s coach, following last week’s decision by district officials to not get involved in the matter.
“It’s certainly not over yet,” said John Cohn.
This past fall, his daughter, Maya, was informed by coach Scott Maier that she could no longer be on the team because she would miss a game due to a trip to Sacramento for the Youth and Government program.
Tempers flared shortly thereafter when her father began to publicly question the coach’s authority to make such a ruling.
“I’m asking, Do we want to give coaches, who generally are non-educators the undefined authority to decide what’s compatible with their sport and what is not?” he told The Wave. “In this instance, the coach determined that my daughter and her involvement with Youth and Government, which would cause her to miss a single game, was unacceptable and incompatible.”
The issue was eventually brought before the Culver City Board of Education on Jan. 12, with some hoping it would reverse Maier’s decision.
In a school board meeting that saw every available seat filled and people peering in from the hallway, Maya Cohn made one of her first public remarks about not being allowed to be play soccer.
“I did not foresee that I would have to choose between Youth and Government and soccer,” she told the board.
However, as school board vice president Scott Zeidman put it, the only person that he and his colleagues can tell what to do is the superintendent.
Speaking from the perspective of a coach, he said he could not see how or why the school board should intervene.
“Since you’re doing something else, I don’t want you on my team,” Zeidman said, “How in the world can the board of education say that’s a bad ruling?”
Board Member Kathy Paspalis agreed that “it’s not the board’s job to micromanage the athletic department.”
The only dissenting board member was Karlo Silbiger, who supports Maya Cohn’s efforts to be involved in extracurricular activities.
“I thought about it and realized it was in her best interest to be involved in as many things as possible,” he said.
The director of the high school’s athletic department, Ian Drummond, also took a firm position.
He said that students should not enroll in one activity if it will adversely affect their participation in another.
“If you cannot fulfill your obligations to your teammates and your delegates, if other people are depending on you and you know from the start you can’t fulfill those obligations, don’t sign up to let them down,” he said.
Maya Cohn has been playing soccer since she was about 5. Most recently, she played defensive fullback.
“It does mean a lot to her,” said her father.
Now, following the school board’s suggestion, he says he is meeting with Maier face-to-face, although those meetings are “not conclusive as of yet.”
The main evidence in support of allowing his daughter to return are the high school’s vague eligibility requirements to play sports.
The guidelines, which outlines 12 requirements, include stipulations such as maintaining a 2.0 grade point average while playing on a team and be under the age of 19.
John Cohn says there is nothing that states that students participating in sports cannot partake in any other extracurricular activities.
“There’s nothing about whether you can be disqualified for potential activities and who makes those kind of decisions,” he said.
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