Given how Hanson handled Rittman's holdover players, are you at all surprised? It doesn't surprise me in the slightest, that this end-to-end, mediocrity played favorites to the detriment of her team.
News flash: coaches play favorites, they have their own blind spots and yes, they can be self-defeating. IIRC, future NFL hall of famer and Stanford WR James Lofton only caught three passes his sophomore year, and 12 passes his junior year. Along comes brand new coach Bill Walsh and presto, Lofton catches 53 balls for the same ypc as the prior year. What the heck was Christiansen thinking? And Christiansen was a hall of fame coach!
On my own son's volleyball team at Princeton, their best hitter languished on the bench his senior year. He played well his first two years (10th in the NCAA in service aces his freshman year in 2011), got hurt, rehabbed his junior year. His senior year, he had the second highest service ace percentage on the team and he hit for the highest average as a pin hitter. The margin was even greater for conference games. But he played in just 1/3 of the sets. And during the annual team banquet, the coach praised another pin hitter as "having the highest hitting average." And so it goes.
Coaches have their own blind spots. And I suspect that Coach Hanson has more than most. If there is a sliver of justice in this world, she'll be gone by tomorrow.
News flash: coaches play favorites, they have their own blind spots and yes, they can be self-defeating. IIRC, future NFL hall of famer and Stanford WR James Lofton only caught three passes his sophomore year, and 12 passes his junior year. Along comes brand new coach Bill Walsh and presto, Lofton catches 53 balls for the same ypc as the prior year. What the heck was Christiansen thinking? And Christiansen was a hall of fame coach!
On my own son's volleyball team at Princeton, their best hitter languished on the bench his senior year. He played well his first two years (10th in the NCAA in service aces his freshman year in 2011), got hurt, rehabbed his junior year. His senior year, he had the second highest service ace percentage on the team and he hit for the highest average as a pin hitter. The margin was even greater for conference games. But he played in just 1/3 of the sets. And during the annual team banquet, the coach praised another pin hitter as "having the highest hitting average." And so it goes.
Coaches have their own blind spots. And I suspect that Coach Hanson has more than most. If there is a sliver of justice in this world, she'll be gone by tomorrow.
Audaces fortuna iuvat