Friday night at Petersen Events Center, two coaches walked to the same podium after the WPIAL Class 2A championship game. What they said told you everything you need to know about two programs – and two men.
Sewickley Academy’s Mike Iuzzolino, a former NBA guard who spent eighteen years coaching at the college level, had just won the first WPIAL title of his high school career. His team beat defending champion Jeannette 52-38. When asked about the brawl that erupted in the handshake line – punches thrown, law enforcement separating players, at least one Jeannette player dragged into a locker room by teammates – Iuzzolino said: “We’re not going to talk about that. The game is over. Let’s move on from it.”
Then Adrian Batts, Jeannette’s head coach of sixteen years, took his turn. When asked about Sewickley Academy’s size and the ages of its players, Batts smiled and told the room: “You guys are pretty smart. You can figure it out.”
One coach protected his kids. The other told reporters to draw their own conclusions about whether the opposing players – students from Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – were lying about who they are. He didn’t have the courage to make the accusation himself. He just winked at the press and let the implication do the work.
And then people wonder why the handshake line turned into a fight.
Kids don’t learn that in a vacuum. When a head coach models resentment from the podium – when the adult in charge treats the other team’s legitimacy as a punchline he’s too clever to deliver himself – the players absorb every bit of it. The brawl didn’t start with the teenagers. It started with a culture that taught them the other side didn’t deserve to be there. Senior guard Kymon’e Brown went to the same microphone and said what his coach wouldn’t: “They can recruit and we can’t. They got money. We don’t. They can go out and recruit people from Africa. We can’t.”
Brown is eighteen years old. He’d just lost a championship game. That moment deserves grace. But the sentiment didn’t come from nowhere. Coach Adrian Batts taught him that it’s okay to show the world bad sportsmanship even when you lose.
But here is the detail that exposes every bit of this. The same African students were on Sewickley Academy’s roster last year. Same names. Same school. Same kids. And last year, Batts’s Jeannette team beat them by twenty points in the WPIAL semifinals. A Jayhawk player posterized one of them on a dunk so vicious it went viral across Pittsburgh. Nobody questioned their ages. Nobody called them an all-star team. Nobody suggested they were recruited. Nobody threw punches in the handshake line.
The only thing that changed between last year and this year is that Batts lost.
Apparently, students from Africa at a private school are fine when they’re on the wrong end of a highlight reel. It’s when they start winning that their ages become suspicious, their enrollment becomes a scandal, and their presence becomes something a veteran coach can smirk about at a press conference. Strip away the sports language and what remains is a room full of adults who decided that African kids don’t belong at an American school – and not one of them with the honesty to say it plainly.
On the other end of this are teenage boys who attend a 186-year-old academic institution where athletic recruiting is prohibited by policy. They carry full course loads. They met the same admissions standards as every other student. Last year they got humiliated in the playoffs. This year they won a championship. And instead of celebrating, they had to be protected from a postgame brawl while a sixteen-year veteran coach told reporters to “figure it out” when asked about their ages.
Imagine being sixteen years old, holding a trophy you earned, and hearing a grown man insinuate to a room full of cameras that you’re not who you say you are.
Mike Iuzzolino won a championship Friday night and told the press to move on. Adrian Batts lost one and told the press to read between the lines. One coach showed his players how to handle a moment with dignity. The other showed his players that when you lose, you burn it down. Every adult who followed – the broadcaster who tweeted, the commenters who piled on – took their cue from a man who couldn’t accept that his team got beat. The Jeannette players who deserved better leadership. The Sewickley players who deserved to celebrate. Every one of them was failed by the grown-ups in the room.
The quiet part is getting very, very loud. And Adrian Batts said it first.
