Coaching young athletes reaches beyond the game

The greatest lesson an educator can impart to a student is that mistakes have consequences. That lesson is apparently lost on Tony Ross, the Canfield High School baseball coach who resigned his position last month, days before pleading guilty to gambling charges, but has now applied for reinstatement.
Coaches are supposed to teach young athletes the fine points of their sport, but just as important they must be role models.
If Ross had the baseball-teaching skills of Major League manager Tommy Lasorda, he still wouldn't be qualified to coach a high school baseball team.
What follows is a short summary of the Tony Ross story, based largely on Canfield Police Department reports.
Unsanctioned poker tournaments
While he was the team's coach he hosted 11 poker tournaments in a rented hall, ostensibly to raise money for the team. Those tournaments took in more than $60,000. Incomplete financial records show that most of that money was paid out to participants. The only money that went directly to student athletes was $1,500 for two scholarships. Meanwhile, $1,100 was paid to "volunteer" coaches for the high school team and $1,000 went to purchase clothes and shoes for the coaches.
Ross never established a properly incorporated tax-exempt entity to run these Texas Hold 'Em poker tournaments. That would have been the first requirement for holding a gambling event for charity under Ohio law. Even if he had, the tournaments as held violated state law in other ways. The only evidence Ross offered that he attempted to conduct these tournaments according to law was an unsubstantiated claim that he called the attorney general's office, which referred him to the local sheriff. He said Michael Budd, former second in command to Mahoning Sheriff Randall Wellington, gave him the go-ahead. Budd didn't testify to that; he's imprisoned on federal charges stemming from the mistreatment of county inmates.
Ross didn't clear his enterprise through the district, and when Superintendent Dante Zambrini heard about the games in a roundabout way, he told Ross to quit having them. He had three more.
Day in court
Ross resigned as baseball coach Dec. 5, a day before he attempted to plead guilty to gambling charges in County Court. That plea was postponed until Dec. 22, at which time Judge Joseph M. Houser found Ross guilty of four misdemeanor counts of gambling. He was given four 180-day jail sentences, all but 10 days of which was suspended. Even those 10 days won't be served because of overcrowding at the county jail. Houser ordered Ross to perform community service instead and placed him on 12 months probation.
It's unfortunate that Houser didn't have the foresight to make it a condition of Ross's probation that he refrain from coaching youth sports. Perhaps it didn't occur to him that Ross would be brazen enough to walk out of the courtroom and try to walk right back to his job as a Canfield coach.
But he did. Ross is one of eight applicants for the job from which he resigned.
We can't imagine that Zambrini will recommend to the board of education that Ross be hired. In the unlikely event that the superintendent looks past the record, the school board certainly shouldn't.
Coaching high school athletes is a privilege, not a right. Ross has forfeited the privilege through his conviction on criminal charges, poor judgment in the sloppy handling of $60,000 in the name of the school district and by continuing to have the tournaments after Zambrini told him to stop. Less than 3 percent of the proceeds went to student athletes, a pitiful share for any kind of fund-raiser.
To rehire him would be to validate what he apparently believes, that none of that really matters.
It does, or at least it should.