One Word for 2015-16: Partnership
August 20, 2015
By Kevin Wolma
Hudsonville athletic director
One word. Every year before the school year starts I choose one word to help me focus on what is important and shed all the other clutter in my life. I try to choose a word that will help me in my professional and personal life.
The word I choose for the 2015-16 school year is partnership. After choosing my word, I realized the word partnership can further enhance our already strong athletic program too.
Often roadblocks are put up in athletic programs that do not allow the program to reach its fullest potential. This creates a separation within a program where all the partners involved detach themselves from the goals/values set by the organization. We see this in every organization, but this article is going to specifically discuss the partnerships between parents, coaches, student athletes and officials.
When I first started coaching basketball, I encountered a situation where parents were unhappy about what they thought was a reduced role for their student athlete on the team. He was a starter his sophomore and junior year, but the dynamics of the team his senior year required that I move him because he was one of my best offensive players that could help the second unit. He would play about the same number of minutes, but his role would change.
As a coaching staff, we believed this change helped the team and the student athlete by allowing him to use his strengths as an offensive player. He would have more opportunities to score than he would have if he was a starter. We were trying to do what was best for the team and individual but the parents did not see it that way.
Reasoning only made the situation worse as they felt he was entitled to start. They did not appreciate the fact that we were trying to give him more opportunities to reach his fullest potential. The parents went as far as starting a petition to remove me as head coach along with telling anyone who would listen how bad I was as a coach. This lack of partnership hurt our team. The student athlete complained openly to other players on the team, which created a negative atmosphere in the locker room, and the parents created a negative atmosphere in the stands. Needless to say that was a tough season to build a cohesive group.
This story provides insight on how one isolated incident can have an impact on so many other partnerships. The parent/coach partnership was strained along with the player/coach partnership. This inhibited the growth of the team to become the best it could because of the negative culture created. The parent/child partnership was also directly affected because the parents took on the role of an agent or defender and not one of a supporter or advisor. Just think if the parents talked to their child and said, “This is a great opportunity for you and your team. You could see a lot of benefit by supplying the scoring load off the bench. If this makes the team better, you should embrace it.” The outcome and season could have had an entirely different feel by handling the situation differently.
During the season there is going to be some adversity and “why” moments, but having an open and positive communication line with the coach and your child is the key to forming positive partnerships. You don’t have to always agree with the decisions, but how you handle the “why” moments will have a profound impact on your child and the team he or she plays on.
The other type of partnership that is not described in my story, but is becoming more and more fractured every year, is the parent/fan/official partnership. Last year I had a group of officials ask me to sit in the stands of an opposing team section because of how degrading those fans were toward the officials. On more than one occasion I had to talk to a group of fans and ask them to keep it positive. Most of the time they looked at me as if to say, “You can’t tell me what I can and can’t say.”
The one thing that people do not understand is that yelling at an official has no bearing on the game. An official has never changed a call based on what a fan has to say. In the last two years there has been a steady decline of officials leaving the profession and very few officials entering the profession. Do you blame them? Who wants to work 2-3 days a week and get yelled at for two hours.
Let's be different. To improve this partnership, let’s give them applause when the officials are introduced for each contest. After the game thank them for their time and efforts. I encourage anyone out there who has an interest in officiating to give it a try. You can have a powerful impact on student athletes.
Partnership is a very important part of high school athletics. I encourage everyone to make my word for 2015-2016 a part of your experience with high school sports as well. Together, let’s cheer on your teams and make this the best year yet.
Wolma has served as Hudsonville's athletic director since 2011 and previously coached boys varsity basketball and girls varsity golf among other teams. He also previously taught physical education and health.
Whymer Made Blue Water Moments into Memories
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
September 29, 2020
When considering all the reasons Jim Whymer was a beloved and Hall of Fame sportswriter in the Thumb area, one stands out above the rest – he cared.
He cared about the quality of the sports section at the Times Herald in Port Huron. He cared about making sure the impossible task of covering schools and sports as equally as possible was accomplished. And he cared about what the newspaper meant to the community.
But most of all, he cared about the people he was writing about.
“He wasn’t going in it just to get a story – he cared about people,” said Shawn Sharrow, a 1994 Marine City graduate who coached basketball at Marine City and St. Clair. “He cared about relationships. As much as he liked sports, he liked people and building those relationships over the years. After he did an interview with you, he would stand there and talk with you for another half hour. He just wanted to develop those friendships.”
Whymer, who worked at the Times Herald from 1978 through 2012, died this past Thursday of metastatic melanoma. He was 64.
He is survived by his wife, Patty, his children Traci Whymer (Tyson Connolly), Kyle (Amanda) Whymer and Joel (Rachel) Whymer, and his grandson, Finn; and by his mother Teresa, sister Michele Seif and brother Bill (Pattie).
He also is survived by the countless yellowing press clippings with his byline that can be found in hundreds of scrapbooks throughout homes in the Blue Water Area. Clippings that no doubt made special memories that much more special for those holding onto them.
“I think like no other person I’ve been around, he made kids feel special,” Port Huron Northern boys basketball coach Brian Jamison said. “He had an amazing ability to make kids feel special. It was in his articles and how long he would take to talk to a kid. He would know the kid’s uncle and their cousin, and he would talk to them about that. I think kids genuinely felt better after talking to him.”
Whymer won several awards for his journalism, including a spot in the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan Hall of Honor and the Port Huron Sports Hall of Fame.
Good luck finding those awards displayed anywhere, though. Whymer was more interested in making sure the athletes and coaches were getting proper recognition.
“He was really thorough and really interested in what we were doing, even in little old Deckerville when he had Port Huron and Port Huron Northern in his backyard,” Deckerville football coach Bill Brown said. “He’d come up to Deckerville, he’d even go to playoff games – we'd play across the state and he was there. Then after the game, he would just ask you respectful questions. It’s just too bad, because he’s definitely going to be missed. Everybody looked forward to seeing him. He was more than welcome here; he probably could have stayed overnight at someone’s house if he needed to.”
Brown, Jamison and Sharrow had interactions with Whymer as players and coaches. Brown also got to see Whymer as an official, as Whymer worked for more than three decades officiating basketball, baseball, softball and football games throughout the area.
“You can’t even get mad at the guy because he’s such a good guy,” Brown said with a laugh. “He was always square with you.”
Jamison also coached both of Whymer’s sons, and currently has Kyle as his junior varsity basketball coach at Northern. All of the Whymer children played sports at Northern, with Traci being part of an MHSAA title-winning tennis team and Joel setting records on the basketball court and earning a scholarship at Lake Superior State University. (He would later transfer to Grand Valley State.)
“Jim’s always been more like family to me,” Jamison said. “I think everyone feels that way about him. He’s like your fun uncle that you love to talk to. Jim always did a nice job of keeping the story separate from him being the dad. In that respect, he made it easy on me. He was very, very supportive of his children. That’s something – as special as other people felt – that guy was truly all in for all three of his kids when it came to sports and school. I think he was an ultra-professional, and he didn’t want to overwrite about his kids.”
After leaving the Times Herald, Whymer began working in the athletic department at St. Clair County Community College, where he continued his quest to make things as special as possible for student athletes. His main duties included scheduling high school and middle school events at the college’s Fieldhouse – whether it be smaller local tournaments or a multi-day holiday basketball showcase that grew to more than 40 teams.
The Fieldhouse can fit more than 2,000 spectators, and Sharrow said if not for restrictions because of COVID-19, a memorial service for Whymer could fill it. That’s likely not an exaggeration.
“He might be showing up at your practice in the last 10 or 15 minutes, and he always walked in the gym with a smile on his face,” Sharrow said. “If he was ever having a bad day, you’d never know it. He made athletes feel important. Even watching him as a coach talking to my players, you could see their faces light up that they were going to be in the paper and that Jim Whymer wanted to talk to them.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Longtime sportswriter Jim Whymer works the phones during his time at the Port Huron Times Herald. (Middle) Whymer also was an MHSAA-registered official for 35 years. (Below) Whymer is survived by his wife Patty and their three children. (Photos courtesy of the Whymer family.)