Tim Green resigned as Lakers head photo coach in the midst of the legal battle over the Lakers' suspension. Kris Russell
Skaneateles — In front of a standing-room-only crowd in the meeting room at the school district office, with television cameras rolling, print journalists feverishly taking notes and football team players silently waiting, the Skaneateles Board of Education officially accepted Lakers football head coach Tim Green’s resignation on Nov. 15.
Member Thomas Lambdin cast the sole ‘no’ vote in the 6-1 decision, saying he felt the opposing side of the issue needed to be represented in the record.
The board then unanimously appointed assistant football coach Joe Sindoni as interim head coach for the remainder of the 2011-12 school year. The district will hire a new, permanent head coach “as quickly after the end of the season as makes sense,” said district athletic director Stacey Tice.
The acceptance of Green’s resignation marks the probable end of a tumultuous and divisive period in Skaneateles high school football history, after the undefeated Lakers were suspended from play by Section III Athletics for illegal recruitment practices by coaches, and two subsequent state judges upheld the decision.
The ban prevented the Lakers from playing in the sectional championship game in the Carrier Dome on Nov. 7.
At the Nov. 15 board meeting, nearly 100 people attended to witness the final action in the football saga and have one last say to the school board on the topic.
Twenty members of the football team submitted a petition to the board asking it to reject Green’s resignation and keep him on as head coach. The petition, read aloud to the board by Lambdin, stated that Green was a positive influence on the players and always urged them to keep school and family as higher priorities than football.
Community member and football player parent Happy McClurg said she respected both Tim Green and the members of the school board, and she wished the entire affair could have been taken care of privately, rather than so publicly. She suggested the board should apologize to the players for taking away their sectional championship opportunity, but also thanked the board for their service, saying, “This is still the best school [in the area].”
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Comments
OldTimeLaker 1 year, 5 months ago
Is it me or do I count nine or ten adults on the sideline? And, some are using headphones so there must be others in the booth. Exactly how many assistant coaches does a high school football team need? Were all of those coaches approved by the BOE? If this was SU football I could understand, but maybe a tad much for Class C high school football. Maybe it is time to rethink our priorities and not think of Skaneateles football as college level. We have all seen what happens when a team takes a win at all cost attitude.
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