"Louisville lacrosse coach accused of abusive tactics"

From NJ.com and USA Today

Analysis by Alexis Cross in SRM 334 (section 1)

In today’s NCAA athletic arena it seems as though emotions are a key component in any athlete and coach. For example, Louisville University’s women’s lacrosse team faced various emotional hurdles this fall with the suspension of head coach Kellie Young. Young is a former 2003 James Madison University women’s lacrosse coach. While at JMU she led the team to three NCAA appearances. Unfortunately, head coach is now under investigation for complaints of abusive tactics from 6 former and previous Louisville lacrosse players. It is believed that head coach Young had just crossed the line. There were a few examples in the various articles, for example one being, coach had made a player with a torn ACL do 250 push-ups as punishment in an airport terminal.

Lacrosse is a fast growing sport and really doesn’t get the media coverage it deserves. However, in this case Louisville is getting almost too much coverage. The team, coaching staff and the school are all under investigation. It is just unfortunate that the coverage the media is providing is apparently exaggerating the information. I have a friend on the team and she stated “I feel so bad for my coach, they’re exaggerating everything, it is just awful here.” As outsiders prospective, it is hard to really know what to believe about this case. Does the head coach have her team brain- washed in other words, thinking that her coaching style is ok and normal? Or is the media just amplifying the information.

As a player, I could not imagine what the team is going through right now. It is my understanding that they did still compete this fall in tournaments under the assistant coaches. But the amount of stress this now adds to the team. It will be interesting to see how the case plays out and will the team overcome this adversity to compete they want to this spring.

Relating this topic to class, the media is inevitably changing the world of sports and how fast stories can get out. Also the fact that media is now so dominant in athletics, as a society we are so wrapped up in sports. The media has to keep up with how interested people are in knowing what is going on in the professional, college and maybe even high school sports. On the other hand, this scandal has showed me if I was ever interested in working in athletics how important being prepared and relationships are. Being prepared to handle any situations that are thrown at us in the athletic department. And the fact that continuing to develop relationships every day cannot only but help you when things like this come up. As a University you get through it together.

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Analysis by Jonathan Barden in SRM 334 (section 1)

The article I focused on was found on usatoday.com written by Adam Himmelsbach and was titled “Louisville lacrosse coach accused of abusive tactics”. The article took little time getting into the meat of the matter and dishing out the gossip a lot of readers would want to read about. After a short introduction the article swiftly moved into bullet pointing some of the worst offenses the coach had been accused of handing out to her players. The head coach, Kellie Young was allowed a few lines to defend herself in which she explained not all of these actions were 100% correct and then the article continued in a rather negative light, explaining more disturbing stories and action, or lack of action taken by the school to combat her behavior.

Analyzing this article from a media standpoint I would say that this article was rather one sided and definitely gave coach Young a bad name if you were to simply read this piece alone. The attempt to create a well-balanced article by throwing in the odd quote from Kellie Young did not really help her case as the next point immediately put her back down again by using rumored stories from disgruntled ex-players. From researching this story in depth a lot of other current players strongly stand by the coach and claim a lot of this information has been blown out of proportion or completely fabricated, but these point of views were unsurprisingly not included.

Despite this I would still say the article was a well written and well-researched piece. It definitely went in depth to the story, had numerous sources close to the camp and was able to use quotes from named players and parents to back up points made. In addition to this the author had clearly researched the topic well and had a good understanding of what was happening in the story, from disgruntled parents to the roles the athletic director and athletic administrator in attempting to control the situation.

I believe this article is extremely relevant to our course as it clearly shows how to write and lay out a news story to grab the reader’s attention. The title of “Louisville lacrosse coach accused of abusive tactics” immediately draws the reader in as it tells you there is going to be drama in the story happening as a very well respected sports program. And sports fans love nothing more than a drama filled sports story. Then after a brief introduction and laying out of the story it immediately gets into the key gossip filled points that most readers probably read the article for. This is an important tactic used for this type of writing as the reader is now hooked into the story and you can start to detail in more detail and more specifically what actually happened. Additionally the use of quotes not only adds more reliable information to the story but also helps break up the monotony sometimes found in articles that drag on without switching pace at all. The use of the “Story Highlights” section down the left hand column also helps to break up the story and is another effective tactic to entice the reader to read on. All of these tactics could be taken on board by members of our class to improve the standard of our sports writing in the future.