Harvey Araton of the NY Times recently wrote a follow-up piece to the Bergtraum v. Brandeis debacle earlier this year (now TimesSelect only, I’m sorry) where Epiphany Prince scored 113 points against an overmatched Brandeis team in a PSAL girls basketball game. Brandeis lost that game 137-32.

Now, I admit that I have skin in this game, since I know both coaches, and Beacon used to play Brandeis twice a year, and in the nine years I coached against Brandeis, I came to know Vera Springer as a) an excellent coach and b) an even better teacher / mentor to her kids. Our games were always hard-fought, with several of our games decided by one point over the years. The toughest loss I ever had was a one-point loss to Brandeis in the playoffs when Jessie, Denice, Gaby and Dori were seniors. Throughout all of those games, Vera became a good and respected friend, and both our teams always looked forward to our games, as we knew that they’d be hard fought, but spirited.

On the other hand, Bergtraum has long "run it up" against weaker opponents, and having won eight straight PSAL championships, weaker opponents often mean everyone else. They consistantly have teams that have more talent than anyone else, and they have a JV program and a "B" team could beat many varsity squads in the city. Coach Grezvinsky has created a program where the top talent in the city wants to go to his school, and as a result, he wins a lot of games by a lot of points. That’s fine. What happened against Brandeis, it seems, was a little different:

The first time she matched up with Grezinsky this season, it was Bergtraum 115, Prince 44, Brandeis 22. Springer could live with that, but not the Feb. 1 debacle, in which Prince scored 30 points in the fourth quarter, often basket-hanging, while her teammates on the bench counted up to 100 and groaned when one of the substitutes had the audacity to launch a shot.

Springer became convinced "the whole thing was planned" when Erica Morrow, Bergtraum’s second-best player, was held out of the game, and one of the Bergtraum players told one of hers that Epiphanny was "going for the record."

When Grezinsky overheard Springer ask a referee, "What’s he trying to do?" she said he yelled over, "Vera, we’re just trying to get ready for the playoffs." Said Springer yesterday: "Since when do you get ready for the playoffs by having one player take all the shots? Why does a coach deliberately allow that to happen?"

If this is true, and I have no reason to doubt Vera’s word, I think the PSAL needs to step in and sanction and suspend Coach Grezvinsky. What he did was good for no one. He got his team and his player national recognition, I suppose, but he did so with notoriety, not with excellence. He sent a terrible message to his team that day — he told them it was o.k. to humiliate your opponents. His actions showed them that the mutual respect upon which sportsmanship is based meant nothing to him. (And honestly, he should be glad that Vera and her girls embody that ideal of sportsmanship as much as they do, because there are a lot of players who, when faced with the prospect of being humiliated like that, might have tried to stop Prince from scoring so often with a few hard fouls. Perhaps he chose his opponent carefully, knowing Vera would never allow her girls to do that, but if that’s true, it makes it all the worse, that he would abuse a coach who makes sure her girls play right — and the girls who follow her lead.)

I doubt anything will ever come of this… and Bergtraum came in first in the city and second in the state again this year. I’m sure there are a group of young, talented basketball players who are applying to Bergtraum again this year, because Coach Grezvinsky can promise them championships and chances for scholarships in ways that many other coaches cannot. My hope is that there are also a few girls who, seeing the class and dignity with which Vera Springer and her girls handed this incident, choose to go to Brandeis as well.

In any respect, for me, I’ve lost a lot of respect for Grezvinsky and his program. It doesn’t matter how many championships you win, how many records you set. What matters in high school sports are the ways in which you use your time with the kids in your charge to teach them important lessons that have far-reaching effect long after they’ve graduated from your school and left your team. High school sports should give us a venue to teach kids what is best about teamwork, sacrifice, respect and working together toward a larger goal.

And, for that, I don’t care what the score is — Vera Springer is ten times the coach that Ed Grezvinsky is… and perhaps most telling, I’d rather Vera teach Jakob to play basketball than Coach Grezvinsky. I know that if she did, he’d learn as much about being a good person as he would about having a good jump shot.