Thu 7 Jun 2007
Remind me again why the College is firing Coach Ralph White. Stuff like this?
Mokgosi admits to being concerned about coming to America [from Africa] to study. “All of the media portrayals of the States in the news and movies at home showed plenty of guns and violence,” said Mokgosi. “I was a little worried.”
Shortly after Mokgosi arrived on campus he received an email from Ralph White the head coach of track & field asking him to come out for the team. “I guess Coach White had seen in my file that I had some experience running and he thought it might be a good idea if I joined the track team. He told me that joining the team would ease my transition into campus life.”
Feeling a little homesick and wanting to make friends Mokgosi decided to come out of “retirement” and try to run for the Ephs. “Coming to Williams and being a part of the Williams track team were and are still easily the best decisions that I have ever made thus far in my life. Without track, I would have been lost and not survived for long at Williams.”
Mokgosi was immediately struck by the openness and accepting nature of the track team. “I did not expect such a warm and welcoming atmosphere.”
Maybe a new track coach can fix that . . .
June 7th, 2007 at 6:37 am
On Williams’ list of T&F coach candidates will be more than one or two, all of whom would be wonderful. The task is to separate those from the others.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Only if he or she has a Master’s degree!
June 7th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
The current team has a greater percentage of international (and minority) students than any other team on campus. Just putting it out there as a point of interest.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Just to add to ephlette’s point, the Track and Field team has more African-American students than all the other teams except football combined. Ralph White was well aware of this.
June 7th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Football don’t have many - not compared to Florida State, not to speak of Florida A & M.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
I have tried to refrain posting about this topic as much as possible because I did not want anything I said to interfere with Coach White’s attempt to persuade Williams to reconsider their extremely personal and political decision to not renew his contract. I am writing now because even though I feel I have made my position on the matter quite clear through various newspaper articles and a rather controversial petition, I want to explain why I believe the college is making such a serious mistake.
Coach White came to Williams on what was to be a temporary basis. He already had a standing offer to move to a foreign country and run in their national track program. He would have been much more famous if he had taken that offer. He would have been paid a much larger salary. He would not have had his lifelong reputation as a great man questioned in newspapers and in blogs as it is now. But Coach wanted to stay at Williams because he loved it. He loved the possibilities that Williams offered to its students, its faculty, its staff and the Williamstown community. He knew it was a risk, he knew from the start he was not the typical Williams coach, and he did not necessarily fit in with the Williams way of doing things, but he just loved the college and most of all his athletes and their determination. While he has been here the team has enjoyed unprecedented success on the track with admission standards and the scrutiny of athletes increasing every year. However, I do not support Coach because of his success on the track. He is an incredible coach where the actual sport is concerned, arguably one of the best in the nation, but that is not what makes him such a backbone of Williams College, it is everything else that he has taught his athletes.
Coach started by quietly supporting athletes, not in matters related to track but in everything else that mattered to his athletes. He attended student’s concerts, readings, rallies such as Take Back the Night and various other events that were important to them. He also quietly counseled many athletes on the personal issues that they had brought to Williams or had to deal with in their time at college. He was always working in his office late but he always had time to talk to his athletes.
Then he asked us to focus on making donations to the program, which assists in buying holiday presents for children without families. That year the track team raised more money that any other athletic team by far. Some people on the team did not understand why this was important or what it had to with track. Coach was not concerned about what it had to do with track. He was concerned with what it had to do with making us better people.
Then he started Kids Night as a fundraiser for spring break. The track team would baby-sit local children for a couple hours on various Friday nights. All athletes were required to help out as more and more children showed up each week to the mass babysitting in the field house. It was an incredibly innovative and successful fundraiser, which allowed many students who struggled to afford spring break to be able to attend. However, what most people never realized was that Coach was not out to make as much money as possible. He was out to provide a service. He did not introduce the price as pay what you want because he hoped people would throw lots of money at us. He set it out that way so that people who might not be able to afford or find a babysitter for their 3-4 children could simply drop them off at 6 and pick them up a couple hours later. I think every athlete on the team learned from taking care of those children. Most of us did not do it for ourselves, but rather for our teammates so they could afford spring break and for the children and their parents.
Next Coach introduced a community service requirement for the team. When some of his most talented athletes, even some of his captains questioned his logic, he simply told them that they did not have to run on this team, but if they wanted to they had to serve the community. I cannot imagine many other coaches or professors requiring their most talented students to perform community service to stay on their team or to take their class. There were some athletes who did community service on their own, but without Coach White many of us would have never had that valuable experience during college.
Over the years Coach did many other amazing things. He paid for an African family to come live with him and he paid for operations for their children. I asked him if he had told alumni about it when asking them to support the college and the track program but he told he did not do it to be praised for it, he did it because he had the chance and it was the right thing to do.
Then he sent a good portion of our team with Coach Farley to New Orleans to help with the rebuilding efforts. Would many other coach endorse sending away a significant number of their best athletes away for almost an entire month of a season, putting them into conditions where it was hard to train and risk losing competitions because of it? I know Coach did that. For him it is not about winning, but with what he teaches his team, how he asks them to act, what he asks them to do, winning just comes naturally even when it would seem hard to do.
Finally, there are the many personal problems Coach has helped his athletes with. Some have been discussed on here and many have not. Needless to say he is always their for his athletes no matter what happens. He always pushes us to be better but he always respects us for who we are.
I realize that despite being an English major, one who wrote a creative thesis in poetry no less, that this has probably not been the most brilliant of posts or maybe even the most convincing.
I wanted to write it because Coach Ralph White is what Williams College means to me. When I go to work everyday and work with students who struggle incredibly to achieve what comes easy to all the students at Williams I do not turn to anything a professor every said to me, I do not turn to anything that I heard in a lecture hall. I think to myself, what would Ralph say, what would Ralph do.
I loved my time at Williams. I was honored to have been allowed to receive such a great education there with such great people.
But I think not renewing Coach White’s contract maybe the most serious mistake this administration could ever make.
It is not hyperbole when I say that if there is one person that I have ever met that I wish all students, faculty and staff at Williams were more like, especially myself, it would be Coach Ralph White.
June 10th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
“The current team has a greater percentage of international (and minority) students than any other team on campus”
…which, given the number of international students who are athletes, is a feat not hard to accomplish.