Star QB: Maryland Arundel High's Billy Cosh
Photo: Arundelfootball.com
In high school football when is enough enough?
Same question for high school basketball and amateur sports. Same even for girls travel soccer.
It is a question for coaches, team managers, parents, sports administrators and others. Needless to say, it probably is a question being asked at sports fields and in gymnasiums everyday across the country.
On Friday night at a high school football game in Anne Arundel County, MD, the host Arundel Wildcats beat the Glen Burnie Gophers, 75-19. What is notable about the game is that Arundel’s star senior quarterback Billy Cosh threw seven touchdown passes. What is more, Cosh’s first TD pass 54 seconds into the game allowed him to tie the Maryland public school record of 80 career touchdown passes. Then at the 4:01 mark of the first quarter, Cosh broke the record.
Cosh, listed at 6-foot-2, 195-pounds and reportedly headed to Kansas State to play big-time college football, finished the night with his seven TDs completing 16 of 19 passes for 267 yards. He left the game shortly into the second quarter. Certainly, Cosh, the son of a college football coach, is a special talent coming out of a public high school.
Undefeated Arundel is the No. 1 rated team this week in the Baltimore Sun’s varsity football poll and No. 5 in the Washington Post. Glen Burnie is mired in scrubville.
Arundel is a large public school in Anne Arundel County -- about equidistant between Baltimore and Washington in the bedroom community of Gambrills adjacent to the Fort Meade military reservation. Unlike Glen Burnie in most years, Arundel is a sports powerhouse public school in the county and state, competitive nearly every year in several sports, including football, baseball and girls basketball.
But back to the question. When is enough enough?
What is the point of a 75-19 score in a high school football game? Why would a coach allow a top incoming college QB recruit to throw seven TD passes in a game against sorry Glen Burnie? Such questions deserve straight talk within the realm of high school, amateur and recreational sports.
One person posting to the Sun’s high school forum had this reaction: "I just have one question, why was he still throwing the ball honestly after 4 TD’s? He had already gotten the record! GB is really really bad, what was the coach trying to prove? Cosh should not have played after the 1st quarter!"
Sure, some teams are really good in sports and some are really bad. But on the high school, amateur and recreational level, aren’t we rooting for all the kids to compete well, succeed and have a positive experience? Can that occur in a 75-19 game? Doesn't it matter?
No one is saying Arundel should have rolled over in the face of a lightweight opponent. But don’t you just run the ball more after the first few easy touchdowns (Arundel led 40-7 at the end of the first quarter)?
Coaches will say you have to game-plan and execute no matter the opponent. They will say you do not want to develop bad habits and you just can’t let the other team score. They will say you are preparing for tougher opponents down the line. All true. It would send as bad a signal to players to play down to your opponent as seemingly running up the score.
Yet 75-19 scores happen much too often. Maybe Arundel’s coach had a bone to pick with Glen Burnie’s coach. Maybe the Glen Burnie coach did the same thing at one time or another. Or maybe he is just a prick who deserved such an outcome. Who knows what the history is.
Aimlessly running up scores happens on the amateur level as well, and it just doesn't feel right. In Amateur Athletic Union girls basketball, coaches will press 10- and 11-year-old girls relentlessly until they achieve a 50-point win. You know that "wonderful" 62-8 victory or similar in a game where everyone should be focused on teaching the fundamentals of the game.
And what about you, Arundel parents? Did you enjoy and encourage the shellacking, too? Parents do have responsibility as well to use their influences to keep things on an even keel, but it is doubtful they will.
In an under-11 girls’ travel soccer tournament Sunday in Dundalk, MD, a soccer dad could be heard admonishing his daughter's team to "don't let up now" – despite a 5-0 lead deep into the second half when the other team couldn’t get the ball across midfield all game and wouldn't possibly come back to win. (The final score was 8-0.)
Shouldn't it matter that the losing team of girls were competing just as hard. Should they have to hear rip-roaring applause from parents on the winning team at every easy goal scored as if their daughters were the next coming of Mia Hamm?
Let's root for all the kids. Let the kids compete. Let them enjoy the experience. Unlike record-breaking Billy Cosh, it ends with high school or sooner for the vast majority of them.
