In the past two decades, I have gone from being an active player on the high school athletics circuit to being a spectator who not only sees and reports on the game being played, but gets a look into the coaches’ side as well. This unique perspective has led me to take a look at the vast differences I’ve noticed since being a young athlete so many years ago and what changes have occurred over the years.

Parent Involvement

One of the most important things in high school athletics is parent involvement. While the coaches I spoke with across the board agreed that parental involvement had not changed—increased or wavered—in the past two decades, the administration has become more involved and coaches have to be more flexible in their tactics.

“What has changed is the way the school system, Board of Education, and league are micromanaging. They’ve become more restrictive and there are more hoops you have to jump through, for instance, in the way a coach has to get certified. Most coaches are volunteers, but they have to maintain their certifications,” said Anthony Sagnella, North Haven’s head football coach for the past 18 years who has been in the coaching business for 26 years and was a former high school, college, and pro athlete himself. “They have to be approved by the Board of Ed, fingerprinted, get background checks, etc. I’m not saying it’s all bad, but that wasn’t done 25 years ago. And the requirements the kids have to make these days is more demanding than what I had to do.”

Longtime Morgan volleyball and girls’ basketball Coach Joe Grippo offers his own take on how his approach to coaching hasn’t changed despite the changing times. 

“In the old days, I would say the way I coached would be considered totally normal—there were guys that were way over the top and overly aggressive and intense; more than I was. But now I feel like I’m a little bit of an icon,” said Grippo, who has been coaching at Morgan for 33 years. “I think people know I’m not a rookie coach and they know what they’re in for. Could it be we’ve lost kids to other sports because they don’t want to play with me? Sure. Kids today, they don’t like the coach or the coaching style and they’re not playing—they’re picking a sport based on a coach’s style as opposed to if they love the sport or not.”

Branford field hockey coach Cathy McGuirk is another example of a successful coach who has not had to change her coaching style.

“Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing it so long and I have white hair, but the parents don’t really approach me; maybe they’re saying stuff in the stands,” said McGuirk. “We try to do it the way we think is the right way. We’ve been pretty successful in Branford and the parents can see that. Obviously we’ve had to change some things as the kids are a little different every year, but they respond pretty well.”

Safety Still Comes First

The concern with the safety of the athletes has seen an obvious increase over the years. Not just in hiring coaches, but with equipment and also injury prevention and rehabilitation. Many athletes are required to wear face masks and mouth guards now—for example, in field hockey and softball—whereas this was rarely seen in the past. Injuries are also diagnosed more commonly in athletes, most likely because they’ve been studied more extensively and there is more known about them.

For example, concussions were hardly recognized years ago. Sagnella remembers a time he was hit during football and told to “shake it off” and keep playing, while I was tagged sliding into home plate and briefly blacked out after being tagged right in the face, after which I was very briefly examined and told to return to my position in the field. In present day, an athlete would never be told to return to play after even the smallest head injury and if a concussion was in fact diagnosed, there is an extensive time period an athlete has to recover and then tested before they can return to the team.

“Because of the recklessness of the business and so many injuries, etc. at the hands of neglect, there is more scrutinizing. For example, how they diagnose a concussion and the practice time, contact time, and how much hitting they are allowed afterwards. That has changed over the years,” said Sagnella. “The athletes’ equipment is more advanced now and these kids are conditioned, but they’re getting more concussions and I think it’s because the criteria has changed for getting a concussion. With the impact testing, I didn’t think I’d like it when it first got introduced, but I understand the value now and I feel better when a kid passes those tests and the trainer reintroduces them back into practice. Years ago, it was once your headache went away, you were fine.”

No Time Off for the Weary

Something that never existed when I played sports was vacation time. My coaches threatened to bench anyone who missed games due to a vacation for as many games as they missed and today can be a different story.

“When I first started coaching, it was totally up to me to make all the decisions. We used to have a no skiing rule when I first started coaching basketball; now you can’t get away with that and you have to deal with losing kids during Christmas vacation,” said Grippo. “We don’t have this rule at Morgan, but there are rules that exist where you’re not allowed to penalize a kid at all [for going away on vacation] and I always felt it was unfair to the kids who were there to ignore the vacationers and let it happen. I also think it should be an individual thing, but the parents know what the schedule is at the beginning of the season.”

An interesting rule was put in place for a while in the Shoreline Conference, restricting schools from scheduling games during April vacation week, a rule that has recently been overturned, according to Morgan Athletic Director Kevin Rayel, who was in charge of the conference last year. This new rule states that coaches have to be present for their teams and all spring sports have to include April vacation week in their schedule instead of basically shutting down their schools, something Grippo said was happening a lot.

“It’s become a major hassle with scheduling to fit in 20 games and having to deal with weather and other conditions, which makes it impossible if you take a week off during the season,” said Grippo. “But it’s also impossible to fight with the parents. It used to be they would work their vacations around the sports schedule, but these days, it’s not always the case.”

Sagnella said the commitment level in his athletes seems to be different based on grade level.

“I do expect a kid who is a junior or senior to have made it clear to their parents what their commitment means to them,” said Sagnella.

Social Media’s Invasion

The 21st century, without argument, has become a time of smartphones and smart everything. Adults and kids are glued to their devices and this has inevitably affected athletics in the way that high school athletes have access to so much more information—how to be better, train better, become a college athlete, and even get to the level of becoming a professional, to name a few. Distraction can also be a huge issue.

“I think with the amount of information that is out there now—like strength and conditioning, college, etc.—those are two areas where parents are more involved than 20 years ago,” said Sagnella. “You’re finding there’s a lot of specialists and in many communities, the parents are hiring nutritionists and coaches specific to the sport. It’s a positive thing for the kids to work and try to improve—I see the value—but the other side of that is, they feel entitled for shelling out the money and they want a payoff for that. I do think it’s a new problem, because of the Internet and communication sources, so I have to wonder would this problem have existed 20 years ago without the Internet?”

McGuirk is someone who is not entirely affected by the social media era we live in as she has maintained the importance of her athletes not being distracted during practice and playing time.

“The kids have to turn off their phones on the field—if it’s important, they’ll find out about it later. They also don’t run with earphones on because they aren’t going to be playing games like that,” said McGuirk. “Social media speeds things up, but I’m a person-to-person, face-to-face coach. That’s important to me.”

East Haven girls’ basketball and track coach Anthony Russell offers an appropriate summary of the many ways high school athletics have changed over the years—good and bad—but emphasizes that he, like most of his fellow coaches, wouldn’t be in the business if he didn’t truly enjoy it.

“We’ve seen an entire landscape of high school sports change. As a coach these days, you have to be a lot more flexible,” said Russell, who graduated from East Haven in 1995 and was involved in an array of sports during his high school tenure. “You’re under a microscope and you have to be doing everything in an appropriate manner. I guess the mentality all around has metamorphosized—it’s no longer a privilege for kids to compete in extracurricular activities, they think it’s an entitlement. It’s definitely different. But even though that’s changed across the board, I still have great kids and parents and wouldn’t be coaching still if that weren’t the case.”