Removal of Ms. Gaines as Head of FAU High Basketball

As last year was my first year playing high school basketball, I was very inexperienced and in need of guidance. The coaches did not help me to understand the game, but rather had me and all the other girls join the boys open gyms. This was unfair to both the boys and girls teams. The girls had no idea what they doing as they were very inexperienced, and the boys were not getting the more advance practice that they needed. Even though they were welcoming to the girls, they were in need of a more skillful practice that only involved boys, this was obvious to all the players as well as the coaches. It was the senior on the team, as well as the manager, who helped to lead the girls team and the athletes who were new to the game. The coaches would show up late to practices on multiple occasions and would not even provide athletes with a schedule for the week until last minute. We would arrive late to games and would be rushed to change, and then not have time to warm up. Everyone would start off the game on the wrong foot. On one occasions, the coach did not bring enough uniforms for all of the players. One of our players was unable to play in the game because of the irresponsibility of the coach. Throughout the season, as well as the off season, the coaches alloted much more time and effort into the boys team than the girls team.

As someone who isn’t involved in athletics and is in essence a bystander, I have heard countless complaints from various students to where there seems to be an actual problem and not just one person’s perspective or that of a small group. If FAU High students are the elite, let them reach their potential and do not hinder their abilities.

Let me just also say that the respect that the coaches had for the players was nonexistent. They held grudges and penalized certain players based on personal preference. This occurred on both the boys and girls teams. I also believe that being the only senior and carrying the team all season (because they didn’t bother to try and improve the other players) deserved some appreciation, which was not recognized at the sports banquet. In fact, they didn’t even acknowledge that there was a senior on the team, unlike every other sport, who wanted to recognize them and wish them their best on their next chapter in life. I felt that this was immature and disrespectful to me as a player and as a person. I just believe these coaches did not care about the team and only wanted to be there for a paycheck, which is not what coaches should be there for. We should feel like they care and want to be there for us and support us.

I played on the girls basketball team for the 2017-2018 season as the only senior on the basketball team. At first, the coaches seemed to care about the program, but throughout the course of the season, they started becoming lazy and not caring about the teams. The combined practices were not effective or helpful to any of the girls on the team except 1 because most of them just needed to learn the fundamentals and rules, due to it being their first year playing the sport. It wasn’t fair to the girls and they did not seem to enjoy the season. It was also not fair to the varsity boys or jv boys who had to modify how they played and what they did because they had a bunch of inexperienced girls out there. In addition, the coaches did not seem to care about teaching the new girls how to play, and they relied on one player to hold the team and do everything. This became very stressful and wasn’t really fair to her either. I believe if you are a coach, you should be working towards improving all your players and your goal should be to get them to a point where they are able to compete with other teams. This was not done and I feel that it was out of pure laziness. Basketball is a team sport, and the team is only as strong as it’s weakest link. I agree with everyone else on the tardiness and they cancelled practice day of, made us late to games, and only seemed to care about themselves and their lives outside of the basketball season. The girls really got the short end of the stick and it resulted in a season full of stress on all the teams. Last season was not a fun experience at all, and I hope no other girls or boys have to go through what we did.

I’m not personally on the team but I’ve heard very poor things about this coach. The team has been on a downhill slope for the last 2-3 years, and I think the students deserve a coach who will help them progress and do better as a team, which is evidently not happening

a Coach that shows no care or interest in all players is not a coach for me. The team and program is obviously no where even to to a priority for them. Us students represent the school is such a great way, listening to our asks on this subject can be something in return to satisfy the students that give FAU High it’s great reputation.

She prefers travel team members that do not even go to our school over our high school students and she obviously doesnt care about any of the players unless they play varsity

Would prefer to remain anonymous due to the season starting but I agree with the points on the list.

Destroying basketball program

Last year, I was the manager for both the Girl's and Boy's Varsity basketball teams. To start, the amount extremely unequal focus of training the boys team versus the girls team was really shocking to me. The girls team had less experience and needed more fundamentals training, but many times were thrown in with the boys at practice and open gyms, where they had no idea what was going on. Instead of teaching them the rules of basketball and basic skills, the coaches would many times ignore the girls in the short COMBINED girl/guy practices, which is another super inefficient, slowing down the boys and confusing the girls. I remember the girls on the team wanting to really learn, but having to rely on the seniors on the team to literally teach them everything. It made it embarrassing for the girls when they'd go to games and would violate many rules, clearly looking like they had no clue what they were doing, simply because they were not taught anything. They expressed their frustrations to me and older players many times, and I believe it is extremely unfair to focus on one team while completely disregarding the other who needs more guidance. They would separate boys and girls for practice sometimes and I literally think every time it was at Henderson, they just threw the girls on the outside court and did a couple drills for like 30 minutes because of course they were always late, and always let the boys have the better, covered court. I expressed this concern to the several athletics faculty and every time I would bring up possibly having separate practices or bring up how the coaches always came late and seemed like they didn't wanna be there, I would just be told "give it time" and "we'll see". That is not a way to run an athletic program, even at our school which focuses on academics. It makes our school look bad when we show up so disorganized and unprepared to games, and it brings down moral of players, who just wanna be involved in something outside school

Just wanna have fun and play ball with a coach that will allow us to show our potential as a team and program like Coach Feit did.