The Aubrey Thomas case: The biggest problem the high school sports program has suffered over the years is the turnover of coaches. Another obstacle to stability is the absence of teachers who can coach. Most of the activities in this area depend on community volunteers. Volunteers are fine but they tend not to volunteer over the long haul, especially not after their own children cease playing. And a third factor contributing to the confusion is the lack of coherent rules and standards of conduct. The school has one set of eligibility standards, coaches another, parents another, and students another. Bouncing kids off sports teams because of grades or petty infractions of home or school rules doesn’t do anyone any good and creates no end of bad feeling. Removing a kid from the activity he enjoys most should occur only after some careful thought. Aubrey is off the JV basketball team for the most trivial of reasons. Something dumb like this seems to happen every year. Two of the best basketball players in the County, Aaron O’Brien and Adam Bjorkquist, are playing in Ukiah this year thanks to the utter lack of common sense characteristic of sports policy at AVHS.
A whole bunch of us can say we saw him play. I refer to the great John Paye, now starting at guard for the Stanford basketball team. Paye is the first freshman in the history of that school to start in two varsity sports. And he’s considered a major league baseball prospect, too! Paye beat our basketball team almost all by himself last year in the Redwood Classic, driving the length of the floor several hundred times to score on lay-ups. Why you try to play man-to-man defense against guys who are bigger, faster and stronger than you are continues as the eternal mystery of Boonville basketball.
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