Chris Herring and Kenny Tice never imagined they would have to be spokespeople.
But the former New Hope High School baseball player and NHHS parent believe it is time to speak out.
After remaining quiet throughout the season and watching momentum build against New Hope High baseball coach Stacy Hester, Herring and Tice said Saturday they believe people in the community are on a “personal vendetta” and “crusade” to remove Hester as the school’s coach.
“It’s a shame when coach Hester corrects an out-of-control parent during a game, and this parent makes it their personal mission to hold a personal crusade with a handful of other displeased parents and use family and co-worker influence on our elected school board members to reach their objectives,” Herring wrote in a prepared statement.
Herring and Tice said they plan to hold a meeting after church Wednesday night in the parking lot beside the New Hope High baseball field. They said all players (past an present), parents, friends, and supporters of Hester are encouraged to attend the meeting to help show the school board the community supports Hester.
“If enough people don’t come and stand behind coach Hester there is your answer,” Herring said. “I think the whole thing needs to be looked at. If you are going to investigate this man, investigate it right. If you push for change and think he needs to change, give him the guidelines he has got to change. Don’t take 18 years of his life — that baseball field is his life — and throw it down the drain. It is not right. Nobody can rationally say, you know what, he pushed a kid or he got on a parent, we’re going to get his job. What are you teaching your kids?”
Said Tice, “What is that going to come to if that starts happening at every school?”
Herring said the school board needs to stop relying on e-mails and phone calls from disgruntled people. He feels that is all the members of the school board have used to form their opinion.
When asked what the school board should do if the Hernando decision didn’t factor into the decision not to recommend Hester be retained, Herring said the members of the school board still should investigate Hester and do the process right. He also said the code of ethics for members of the school board needs to be re-examined to make sure those officials didn’t or don’t overstep their role and remain impartial.
Herring, who played baseball at New Hope High in 1992 and ’93, Hester’s first two seasons at the school, and Tice, whose son, Philip, is a junior second baseman on the team, then spent nearly the next hour voicing their concerns about the process apparently moving against Hester.
The Lowndes County School District Board appears ready to deliver a 5-0 vote that Hester not return as New Hope’s coach.
Hester said Lowndes County School District Superintendent Mike Halford told him he wouldn’t recommend he be retained based on the poll he took of the five members of the school board.
The school board could vote June 12 at its next scheduled meeting to determine Hester’s fate.
Herring said it is important for people to realize parents should not be allowed to control the team. He said he respects people will have different opinions, but he believes they shouldn’t vocalize those views and use them to try to sway public opinion. He said he and his brother kept their opinions to themselves all season, but they feel it is time to speak out.
“I don’t agree with how the deal went down with Philip, and if Stacy could change it he would snap his fingers and change it tomorrow,” Herring said. “He is a man. He made a mistake. He apologized. He was suspended for his mistake. That is enough embarrassment and enough punishment, but they still can’t let it go.”
Hester was not allowed to coach for the Pontotoc series in the Class 4A North Half playoffs after he was involved in an incident with Philip Tice in a game in the Hernando series.
Hester admitted to grabbing Tice to remove him from a possible altercation with a Hernando player that could have resulted in his team being disqualified from the playoffs. He moved Tice, who was ejected from the game, to the dugout where Kenny Tice said his son told him Hester was holding his arm. Kenny Tice said his son told him, and later wrote in a letter, that he stumbled on the top step of the dugout, causing them to fall into the dugout.
Kenny Tice said his son told him Hester had him against the wall and told him you can’t get into a confrontation because the team would be thrown out of the playoffs.
Tice said he didn’t know the day of the incident exactly what happened but he didn’t have a problem with what transpired after talking with his son and meeting the following week with New Hope High Principal Lynn Wright, assistant principal Matt Smith, Hester, athletic director Dale Hardin, and baseball team representative Debby Upton, who taped the meeting.
“I told coach Hester at the meeting that if I had thought you were hurting my son, there wouldn’t have been a fence or a dugout that could have held me back,” Tice said. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. The big deal is the deal before that. It kept dominoing.”
Tice said he never has spoken about the incident with the superintendent or any members of the school board. He said one school board official, who he declined to name, asked him to press charges against Hester for his role in what happened.
Tice believes Hester is in a no-win situation and that the veteran coach isn’t the only person who is being affected the longer this issue goes on.
“I told them at the meeting, ‘Coach Hester has had a gun pointed at him. The trigger is cocked, but (Philip) is not pulling the trigger on him,’ ” Tice said. “How would he feel if we went to Mississippi State, Delta State, or West Alabama and he was carrying (the feeling) that his (high school) coach got fired because of him? If everybody is so worried about the kids, they should see what they’re doing to the kids now. It just ain’t right.”
Tice and Herring said the push to remove Hester stems from an incident at a game at Houston earlier in the season. They said Hester told a woman, whose son plays on the New Hope team, to sit down and to keep her mouth shut.
That morning, New Hope had practiced a sign for a squeeze bunt play. At the game later that day, Hester gave one of his players the sign to squeeze bunt multiple times and he didn’t take it. The player then struck out with runners on second and third base. When the player walked toward the dugout, Tice said Hester flipped the player’s hat up and said, “That was stupid. We practiced all day.”
Tice said the woman, who he declined to identify, yelled from the stands and told Hester to keep his hands off the player. He said she continued to say things before Hester told her “sit down and keep your mouth shut.”
From that point, they believe people have been working against Hester behind the scenes. Herring said people have talked to his brother and said things, rumors have circulated, and parents have said they would move their children to other schools if something wasn’t done about Hester.
Tice said a school board member called him two times and asked him “How are you going to feel if Hester hurts one of those kids next year and you had a chance to get rid of him?”
He declined the name the school board official
Herring also said people in the community need to know all of the sacrifices Hester has made for kids and for his program. He said he has paid for clothing and travel expenses for less fortunate players who can’t afford it and allowed them to work off the expenses at a later date.
“He does it so those kids can stand right beside another kid and feel proud because they’re part of a team,” Herring said. “In the past 18 years there is no telling how many thousands of dollars he has paid for out of his pocket before the Diamond Club (the booster club). The kids and the mothers know it.”
Herring and Tice don’t know how the situat
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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