Grief follows tragedy for UVA Lacrosse coach
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The father of UVA lacrosse coach Dom Starsia reportedly died this morning at the age of 86, according to the Daily Progress. The death of his father, Dominic Joseph Starsia, adds another layer of grief for the beleaguered coach who should have been proudly focused on leading his #1 ranked team to the NCAA tournament but is instead coping with a horrific crime allegedly committed by one of his players, George Huguely V, charged Monday, May 3 with first degree murder in the death of UVA women’s lacrosse player Yeardley Love. Two days after Love’s death and Huguely’s arrest, UVA athletic director Craig Littlepage announced both men’s and women’s lacrosse teams will go ahead with the tournament.
How is this news? Or, to put it another way, if this wouldn’t have been published in the absence of a different well-publicized tragedy this week, would the death of the coach’s father have garnered even a mention?
Context, kids. Use some news judgment. A little discretion goes a long way to building and sustaining credibility.
Or, to put it another way, if this wouldn’t have been published in the absence of a different well-publicized tragedy this week, would the death of the coach’s father have garnered even a mention?
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Umm, I think that the headline “Grief follows tragedy for UVA Lacrosse coach” obviates the need for your question for intelligent readers.
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Context, kids. Use some news judgment. A little discretion goes a long way to building and sustaining credibility.
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Context, kid. Use some good judgment. A good deal of pretension goes a long way in undermining your credibility.
I’m just another little pr!ck trying to compensate with my feeble rhetorical exertions. Waaaah!
my prayer go out to both family and to family who have lost love ones of all races to homicde.
Let’s be real here. Coach Starsia’s father died immediately after one of his charges is accused of a horrendous murder. And people are questioning publishing policy? How about we leave the coach alone in his grief and not question what’s newsworthy?! This is a horrible situation for anyone, let alone a coach who’s on the verge of a possible national title. What would you do? How would you feel? Give the man a break.
The only problem I have is that the coach surely knew of Boy George’s issues and problems…Coaches always know.
Coaches should be coaching life as well- isn’t that what it is all about. An anthropology major, playing lacrosse- where is that career going? To anthropology, to lacrosse, to daddy’s business??
Your best coaches, whether they are coaching an athletic team or a team of sales people (they are call sales managers for the uninitiated) should be more concerned about the well being of their team players, than about themselves and national titles and awards (sales and other).
This, by the way, this applys to parents and teachers as well. If these influences in our lives were to pay more attention to their kids or charges, then there just might be a little more thought about what someone is about to do in a certain situation, rather than just doing it without thought. Some people are just “greedy” with their lives. You have to think about other people when you do anything- reckless abandon does not cut the grade- never has.
I agree with Que? How is this news? Or, to put it bluntly, why are you trying to compare apples with oranges. With due respect to the Coach’s father, I think your news article is unfortunate, inappropriate and evidence of poor journalistic judgment. Putting these two separate tragedies in the same content is a mistake. The coach’s relationship with his father and that of his team, while individually important are not the same and should not be equated. Discussing the two in the same context, one tragic and the latter being more of an inconvenience than a tragedy, would be unfortunately trivializing their deaths. Indeed, someone need to grow up and have a better way of discussing related issues without inadvertently taking away the magnitude of each individual story. I concur; Kids please use better news judgment next time whentrying to idolize someone like your local coach. “A little discretion goes a long way to building and sustaining credibility” without offending grieving parties, Que?.
I reverse my position, agree with Incongruity&Poorjudgement and Que? and will now go away quietly to work on improving my intelligence.
CNN reported this morning that the UVa lacrosse coach encouraged players to limit their drinking to one day a week! With 8 players cited for underage drinking, this coach should be fired BEFORE the tournament. The university cannot have such a poor role model and employee of the university. Maybe the coach could have prevented this??!!! Now what does Casteen say! If true, fire the coach him, NOW!
Specifically this was reported on Larry King Live.
TJ - that information is common knowledge. It’s actually an improvement over previous situations. Here’s a description from “Inside UVA” -
In the fall of 1998, a few of Starsia’s players were involved in a series of minor alcohol-linked disciplinary issues. Lacrosse players have long had a reputation as party-hearty types, Starsia said, but the incidents led him to question how committed his team was to playing championship lacrosse. Though he had long taken a laissez-faire attitude toward off-the-field conduct, he decided “enough is enough” and called a preseason team meeting. “I told them they needed to deal with it,” he said.
To his surprise, the players took up the challenge. They came up with a series of self-imposed, self-enforced restrictions on in-season drinking, including an outright ban on alcohol during the season-ending month of May. When one of the team’s leading partyers stood up and announced that he would be adhering strictly to the rules and expected them to follow suit, Starsia knew he had something.
http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/2003/15/starsia_dom.html
Here’s an uplifting college lacrosse story:
It’s not a stretch to suggest the lacrosse community, and the Cal athletic community, helped save Tighe Hutchins’ life.
How else could Chris and Cathy Hutchins reflect on their daughter’s harrowing ordeal? Tighe will walk with her class in graduation ceremonies next weekend, no small milestone given the events of the past six-plus months.
One minute she’s an active, ambitious senior playing lacrosse and earning recognition for her environmental work in Berkeley. Then, suddenly, she’s on the floor of her apartment, the victim of what later would be diagnosed as a splenic artery aneurysm.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/08/MNOR1DB6IE.DTL#ixzz0nLU0hfKp
Oh, and the Cal lacrosse player is from suburban Baltimore and knew Love growing up.
Wow! what a bunch of judgemental twits. “8 cited for drinking” 2 were JUDGED not guilty. I’m an old duffer but I do remember when I was a teen age dufus. Did some things that I probably should not have. I think it is news when someone passes away - that is why there is an obituary page. Codolances to the Starisa family
The lacrosse coach surely knew this punk, unless the coach lived in a vacumm or had no concern.
Everyone talks about “warning signs”……….an athletic coach is a life coach. The best ones know their charges and can get the point across, and still have “winning” teams. Maybe the punk was “too good a player to fail”. Maybe the team and coach wanted the win so badly that it didn’t matter how they did it. The other players knew this punk too- they never had the balls to say a thing or keep him in line. Now they all say “we knew something would happen…..” a little late to speak up.
None of these people who never had the balls to say a thing, or intervene will ever make it in the real world, without help from daddy….
I’ve read here “surely knew”, “probably knew”, “if true.” What all these words mean to me is that those posting demanding Coach Starsia’s firing know nothing. They are speculating. Right now, the primary concern is to determine the facts of how Ms. Love died and to be sure that the one responsible doesn’t escape on a technicality. After that, any collateral fallout can be determined and informed decision made. To make rash decisions based on “surely knew”, “probably knew”, “if true” about other members of the team or the coach can not be reversed if its shown later that speculations about what was known is not true.