RallyNorth.net: High School Sports - Merrimack Valley and Southern NH

Talk about an uninspiring Friday night, and it’s not because the hoop played on court.
I am nauseous right now about the front page story (written by yours truly) in the Saturday Eagle-Tribune about the clash between the coaches, Paul Neal and Rob Niceforo, at Lawrence High.
I don’t think it’s a story. I don’t think two quality coaches, who make one stupid, rash, regrettable decision, deserve the publicity. I wrote it because it’s my job.
Someone in the Lawrence schools, with an axe to grind, wasn’t going to stop until it made news.
That’s the real disgrace in Lawrence. Everyone has an agenda. Someone wanted to make Paul, Rob and the school look bad.
Someone wanted to make the superintendent look bad, too. If the leak is being provided by someone from the teachers union, which is at odds with Mr. Laboy because it’s without a contract, then shame on every member for letting it happen.
They kept barking about this to anyone who’d listen, going as far as tipping off Channel 7 in Boston. Talk about low.
The sad thing about Lawrence is the enemies are not in the distance. They are close. They look these guys and the kids in the eye, everyday, and then stab them in the back, at the expense of the kids.
That said, I know both coaches, Paul very well and Rob professionally. You know they both regret what happened.
It should have ended with a handshake. Instead, it ended in the news and on the TV news.
Only in Lawrence.
All I’ll say about the fight is why did it happen?
Why, in a brand new high school that cost over $110 million dollars to you and me, do the wrestling coach and the hoop coach need to share gym time?
Why doesn’t a $110 million boondoggle like the new Lawrence High have ample space for wrestling and hoop and drama and chemistry and the chess club and any other activity a Lawrence kid wants to be involved in? The place is GIGANTIC!
That’s what people should be asking now.
They couldn’t have built a legitimate wrestling room?
Of course, nobody was watching when Lawrence’s version of the Big Dig was built.
North Andover built an amazing high school for half the price. Their wrestlers and hoop players co-exist fine. The pols, administrators and taxpayers eyed that project with a microscope. It came in early, with the department splurging for hosts of late extras, just to spend the money accorded it.
In Lawrence, nobody, not the mayor or the superintendent, or a city accountant kept tabs as the project ran over budget and over again. Nobody from the union either.
All the millions later and you still get scoreboards in the wrong place in the fieldhouse, curtains that are miscut and prevent track and basketball co-existing, not to mention forcing a horrid shooting background for games, a lack of hardwood on the main court that makes practicing across impossible, too few hoops, grotesque and antiquated wooden backboards and main court hoops that were 10-foot-2 and 10-foot-3 until adjustments were made just before the season.
Let’s not even bring up the 270-foot right field fence on the varsity baseball diamond.
In the end, the kids get hammered, and every adult on every side of these stupid petty feuds shoulders the blame.
As for the fracas, it’s over and hopefully this is the end we hear of it.