Coaches’ camps, clinics, and private training sessions: It all changes when cash is involved
Look, I fully understand the desire for a HS coach to make a few extra dollars by running a summer camp for his/her players, or even offering to tutor a kid in the off-season for pay.
But even though these practices have become rampant pretty much everywhere, I must tell you that they sound alarm bells for me. Because when a coach, in effect, starts to take money from a kid or a kid’s parent to be trained, or for the key’s tuition to attend the coach’s summer camp, that sets up the potential for all sorts of conflicts of interest.
Such as: “Coach, I paid you good money to work with my daughter this past spring…but she’s not on the starting team. Why did I pay you all the money?” Or “Coach, my kid is playing travel baseball in August. He wants to come to your soccer camp, but there’s a conflict in his schedule…will he be penalized that he doesn’t come to your soccer camp?”
You get the idea….these are unnecessary issues that coaches and parents just don’t need. I would ask local school boards and HS athletic directors to review all of their policies regarding their coaches and their getting paid for outside gigs.
Doug Abrams
Rick Wolff
Steve Kallas
Ask Coach Wolff 
Coach, the concept of “pay for play” represents a sad but real and growing concept in high school sports. My son and I had the unfortunate opportunity to experience this at a local prestigious private high school. The JV basketball coach insisted the freshman and JV players take private lessons, for fee, before, during and after the season. When I confronted this on principal, directly with the JV coach, Varsity coach, AD, and Headmaster, they all turned a blind eye and failed to address the issue head on. Other parents knowing it was wrong said only “if you want your son to play, you gotts pay”. It wasn’t until the school’s Board stepped in that the coach was let go. This didn’t prevent the varsity coach from holding it against my son the next two years for me blowing the whistle on his friend and his scam. Unfortunately, the “paying players” were rewarded by the varsity coach who remains coaching today. I understand this practice continues in other schools and all sports as well.
I hear you talk often about the college recruiting process but I never hear about the situations when a coach recruits a player for his school and then refuses to play him.Perhaps that should be a subject for a show…it happens ALL THE TIME.