Glenn Reese Jr., the son of Sen. Glenn Reese, is in a mess at Boiling Springs High School. He’s the coach of the varsity boys basketball team, which as of Friday was 9-14 overall and 1-8 in region. The Herald-Journal reported that 11 players had quit the team, but that the season would continue.

The postponement of the Bulldogs’ game against Byrnes because of Snowtorious B.I.G. couldn’t come at a better time for the team to recruit enough replacement players to fill out the roster. That’s probably not going to stop the bad feelings that are being directed by the former players and their parents.

[Hope] Houchins said the players skipped practice because they “didn’t like the way coach Reese was treating them and they wanted to make a statement.”

“They told my son and Ryan, ‘You guys are leaving, but we don’t want to play for him next year,’ ” Houchins said.

Keith Hoppes, the father of junior Peyton Hoppes, said his son was one of the players who didn’t attend practice.

“We walked out because coach belittled us constantly,” Peyton Hoppes said. “He’s all about himself. He’s not about the team.”

Peyton and his father both said Peyton would not play for Boiling Springs next season if Reese is still the coach.

Ouch. We covered high school sports for three years and never encountered something like this. Actually, the coaches we dealt with were pretty good Joes (or Janes). Something tells us this story is going to get worse before it gets better.

It’s funny (sometimes) to watch the machinations of the anti-public school people in this state. Most frequently, it seems they’re pissed that public schools are actually educating people who come from parents that don’t have a combined income over $100,000, or a predominantly-minority school that hasn’t already had an associated pastor bought off. Such is life.

The recent swine flu issue is pretty interesting. Back in April, the private Newberry Academy had to be shut down after 13 students and their chaperones went to Cancun and brought back the swine flu. If this had happened at a public school, any public school in South Carolina, Will Folks and his buddies at South Carolinians for Responsible Government would have peed their pants in anticipation of exploiting the situation. Instead, it happened at a place of which their boy Chad Connelly chairs the board.

Now, it turns out that, according to SCRN, 40 percent of the Cardinal Newman football team has been (no pun intended) sidelined with the pig sickness. Yet another private school. Those SCISA football playoffs should be hot.

If you think Columbia has civic issues when it comes to major projects, South Carolina’s capital city can’t hold a candle to the mess that has been going on in Birmingham for roughly the past 30 years concerning what is derisively called the “Birmingdome.”

For years, the inept city government in the Magic City has been trying to construct a dome in downtown Birmingham to draw sports franchises and events and conventions. When Atlanta announced the construction of the Georgia Dome, backers of the project really got their panties in a wad. After all, if Atlanta has it, then Birmingham needs it!

What is so insane is that the city let the legendary Legion Field go totally to shit, to the point where an upper deck had to be removed because it was structurally unsound. And, in their infinite wisdom, Legion Field’s natural grass surface was ripped up in favor of an artificial surface recently. That, in particular, hurt the local sports scene because international soccer matches can no longer be played there because FIFA has a rule about games on fake grass. It’s even more boneheaded when considering the number of matches played at the venue during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Now, Legion Field is so decrepit that high school football championship games, played in Birmingham since time immemorial, are now being traded off between Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium and Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium. The Birmingham-Jefferson County Convention Complex (neé Civic Center), where we saw our first sports event (UAB v. Old Dominion, basketball) and first concert (Huey Lewis and the News), is also old and in disrepair.

Birmingdome it is!

Over the past few years, both Birmingham and Jefferson County have undergone massive budget problems, with the county’s issues being so horrible that they made national news. But, that hasn’t stopped the City Council and the BJCC Board from contracting with Kansas City firm HOK for a preliminary mock-up of a potential facility (among other things), complete with (WTF?) a flat roof. The deal, struck in December 2008, calls for the city to lay out $20 million over three years.

The city has now, after receiving a draft contract, delayed releasing the funds for another two weeks. If Birmingham’s elected leaders had been smart, which they weren’t, they would have spent the money to keep up Legion Field and could have made a deal with UAB for a new arena. As it stands, UAB built its own place for basketball 20 years ago (Bartow Arena) and the city is, as always, up the creek.

Local blog Alablawg says what the Wolfe family long agreed upon:

I think the whole dome idea is a delusional waste of money. The Tide is gone, they ain’t coming back. The Iron Bowl is gone, it ain’t coming back. The SEC championship is gone, it ain’t coming back. The NBA is not coming. Neither is the NFL. UAB football will never outdraw Hoover High School. There is just no need for a Dome.

And that post was written in February 2007. Back then, the city was looking at downgrading the dome to a 40,000-seat arena. It looks like that idea, which would have run $380 million instead of $500 million, has gone by the wayside. And, get this, the reason that the release of funds is being delayed is because of a screw-up in the city’s legal office. So, Mayor Larry Langford is going to can some attorneys. Yeah, that’s the answer.

Good luck with that.

For years, we’ve always thought that penalties on college sports teams, and by extension high school teams, have been completely unfair. That is, with the exception of the absolute ass-paddling the Auburn football program got in the 1993 season (they are bastards). For instance, if a booster commits a violation, or a coach, or the administration, they are the ones that should be punished, not the players who put on the jersey and did nothing wrong.

We’ve apparently found common cause with the editorial board at The Herald-Journal. The lead editorial in today’s paper says the obvious, which is that the S.C. High School League needs to come up with a better way of meting out punishment when, as was the case with the Boiling Springs football team, it was the adults who broke the rules, not the players. Instead of handing down a penalty that would leave the players out of the mix, the SCHSL ruled that BSHS would not be allowed to participate in postseason play this fall.

The coaches either knowingly violated the rule or failed to properly ensure that their program obeyed the rules. So fine the school or ban it from the preseason fundraising jamborees. Allow the school to participate in the playoffs but don’t allow it to host any games — or take any revenue the team’s home playoff games generate.

But focus the school’s penalty on the adults who caused the problem rather than the kids.

The school estimates that 100 students will be affected by this ban. The vast majority of those kids probably were unaware of the rule or the fact that it was broken. Yet they are the ones most severely punished by the ruling.

While the NCAA hasn’t totally fixed its penalty structure, to the best of our knowledge the ‘93 Auburn team was the last major program to have all its games taken off TV. When the NCAA amended its penalties, the reason for removing the TV ban was that it disproportionately negatively affected players who were innocent of the rules infraction.

It’s long past time for amateur athletics rulemaking bodies to make sure that, in all circumstances possible, players should be left out of the penalties.

Along with the news of Alabama’s probation, it should be noted that a hit came down on South Carolina’s Boiling Springs High School football team. Because the team had a spring practice with an eighth grader, a direct violation of the S.C. High School League’s rules, BSHS is facing a postseason ban this season.

“I couldn’t be anymore disappointed,” Bulldogs athletics director and head coach Bruce Clark said to The Herald-Journal. “The beauty of it is we do get to get ready to play football. We get to play 11 games. As I said from the beginning, this is my fault. I never go into something fearing the worst. I’m not that type of person, but we got [the worst] and we’ve got to move on.”

Boiling Springs appealed the verdict, but the SCHSL board voted unanimously to impose it because of the four illicit practices. Our following of college football leads us to think this penalty is a little bit beyond the pale, but maybe if high schools are held to a tighter standard, players may look at the mistakes of their coaches and administrators and do a better job of abiding by the rules in college.

For what it is worth, Clark reported the violation, but it doesn’t appear to have worked out for a more limited penalty. Though, the players that were involved with one of the practices in May got their eligibility restored.

Wednesday, the S.C. House of Representatives honors the Myrtle Beach High School football team for the Seahawks’ 2008 AAA state championship. Among the coaches on the team is a man by the name of Tim Christy, who also serves as the head coach of the MBHS baseball team.

Wolfe Reports knew Christy when the coach was in his last of three years on the staff at Louisa County High School in Mineral, Va. Central Virginia, believe it or not, is a hotbed of baseball passion, even at the level of a smaller school like LCHS, which, off and on, has been among the best teams in the area for decades.

When Christy took over the squad, a beloved and long serving coach had retired, and the win-loss record didn’t immediately meet expectations. However, he worked, his players worked, and he put together a solid Lions squad, which was a joy to cover in the Spring of 2007.

He is easily one of the best coaches this reporter has ever covered, in terms of just being a good guy and getting what he needed from his players. One night, the Lions were down 8-1 in the seventh inning. Joking around with the players (had to be in the dugout to get good pictures), the proprietor of this site said, “Well, all you have to do is have a seven run rally.”

Louisa did, and won in extra innings. Christy was able to get these sort of performances from his players, who, in addition to the usual school work, were multi-sport athletes, not being able to solely concentrate on baseball.

This site extends its congratulations to Christy as an assistant on the championship football team, and best wishes for the 2009 baseball season.