Monday, March 12, 2012

WORST. TEAMMATE. EVER.  Look, that's the obvious reaction when learning of the Div III women's hoopster who ditched her team on the eve of the Sweet Sixteen to go to Cancun for Spring Break in her senior year, but my friend Sam Smith (no, not that Sam Smith) has a better question: given how almost every human resources professional uses Google and social networking to screen job applicants, will this (and should this) impair her hiring prospects for her entire career?  Would you refuse to hire someone who demonstrated such disloyalty, or would you at least give her a chance to explain herself?

16 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:19 AM

    Are there breach of contract issues here? Can the school ask her to repay her senior year's tuition? Does DIII have scholarships?

    --bd

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  2. Joseph J, Finn8:38 AM

    Jeez.  You'd think she flashed a gun in the locker room.  Dick move on her part not to tell her teammates?  Sure.  But not inexcusable.

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  3. There's more to this story and we probably won't find out the real truth.  I doubt SI is going to do an investigative report.

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  4. D3 has no athletic scholarships.

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  5. There's a comment at the bottom of Sam's post from an alleged teammate (and Sam says the IP address matches up to the school's), stating:


    <p>as a member of the king’s college lady monarchs basketball team i can tell you that her side of the story has nothing to it. she blames quitting on our coach, but we all know she wouldn’t have “quit” if she didn’t have this mexico trip planned. if she really had a problem with our coach she would have quit at the end of last season like she talked about all year. she’s selfish and shallow.
    </p><p> 
    </p><p>the story that “indicated her minutes has dropped a lot later in the season” is referring to our regional tournament games. the coaches knew she had a trip planned and she was dumb enough to talk about how she wished we would stop winning. she played like shit against suny-oneonta and it was a little obvious why. i don’t blame the coaches for only playing her 10 minutes in our win over william patterson. she didn’t want to win and it was known. no one knew she actually decided to go to cancun until she was already there.
    </p>

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  6. While D3 nominally has no athletic scholarships, it was certainly an open secret at my D3 school that the merit scholarship program (which was and remains quite generous, and which I was lucky enough to get part of my tuition paid through) considered athletic skill/contribution as a "merit."  Folks receiving the scholarship weren't conditioned on playing a sport, but certainly, merit scholarships were offered to folks as an enticement in the hope that they'd come play sports.  (This also applied to certain non-athletic endeavors at my campus, for instance, the exceedingly competitive Mock Trial team.)

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  7. The story's gone sufficiently viral that she's deleted her twitter account, which apparently had all the party-girl tweets you would expect. I sympathize a tiny bit with her, because there's very little that's less meaningful than a Division III basketball tournament, but she should have thought of that before she joined the team. But, yeah, I'm not hiring her if I google this.

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  8. The Pathetic Earthling10:20 AM

    I would see this as a bigger negative on a job application than almost anything not involving actual fraud or criminal violence (and even criminal violence, I might want to hear their side of the story).

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  9. Anonymous12:00 PM

    Am I the only one sensing a tragironic ending involving drug cartel violence? Lucky for her, Cancun isn't a border town.

    --bd

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  10. Chin Music12:00 PM

    There's so little factual information to go on in a job interview that I think this one concrete example of selfishness over team would be exceedingly difficult to overcome particularly where there are other candidates who did not abandon their team to go on Spring Break.  Then again, it might depend on the job.  If she wants to go into the Mexican tourism field, it might show commitment to the cause.

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  11. isaac_spaceman2:15 PM

    Geez, she's a college senior playing DIII ball for a coach and team that hate her and she wants one last Spring Break.  Cut her a little slack. 

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  12. What if they hate her because she wants the Spring Break trip?

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  13. Benner5:24 PM

    As such, I'm not sure this isn't a hoax. Pix or it didn't happen!

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  14. isaac_spaceman8:25 PM

    What if?  If I were her teammate, I would be pissed.  I'm the kind of person that feels like a quitter if I don't finish a terrible book.  But she's 21-ish, and 21-year-olds make a lot of stupid decisions.  In the grand scheme of things, it's not that bad.  It is not malicious or abusive or violent or dangerous or sickening or racist like a lot of the stuff you read about idiot college students (athletes and otherwise) doing.  It might be relevant to demonstrate something about her character, just like a student's choice of classes or friends or ways to pass the summer or facebook photos might say something about her.  If I read about it and were interviewing her, I might ask her about it, but I hope I'd be listening for her explanation, not just looking for an excuse to argue with her about it.  If she said "I really wanted to party," that would be a strike against her.  If she said "I worked my butt off for four years and stayed on campus all summer to train for my senior season, and then the coach stashed me on the bench and belittled me at every opportunity, and I got fed up and decided that it was more important that I take my last chance to just be a regular college student," I might feel differently -- even though it's essentially the same answer as the first one. 

    Plus:  DIII - quit on your team, never get a job again.  NBA - quit on your team, get a 7 year/$77MM contract with a new team.  The NBA:  IT'S FAN-TASTIC. 

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  15. I'm confused.  I thought the NBA didn't exist.

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  16. Indeed.  I think the idea that skipping an important commitment in college = unemployable is a bit...hyperbolic.    

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