Sure, longtime Tigers baseball coach David Tidwell resigned on his own 11 days ago, but it shouldn’t have come to that. He never should have been allowed to walk away.
If those in power had truly wanted Tidwell to remain as Belton’s coach, then the man with 577 career victories would be working on Tiger Field at this very moment.
Tidwell should have been offered a deal that he couldn’t walk away from - perhaps one similar to that given to some of Belton’s assistant football coaches.
Three of the assistants Southern brought in last spring were given some form of administrative title, salaries ranging from $65,000 to $70,000 and no teaching duties.
Add in Southern’s $95,000 salary and that’s more than a quarter-million dollars for a 3-7 football season that included a 56-0 throttling at the hands of Temple, the Tigers’ biggest rival.
Rumor has it that those salaries will get bumped up for the coming year and another football assistant will be elevated to the same non-teaching plateau.
All the talk from the football staff is that it is building its program, and that’s great. Here’s to hoping that it does. But shouldn’t there at least be a few boards put in place before the whole structure has to be paid for?
It doesn’t take a financial genius to realize that it’s bad policy to make salary and teaching concessions to assistant coaches who are still hoping to build something, while not doing the same for a head coach who has put together a palace of a program.
Just in case anyone’s wondering about the girls athletic department, basketball coach Randy Bell is the sole administrator on the girls side and he’s paid less than all three football assistants.
Also consider that Lady Tigers volleyball coach Allison Taylor, who guided her team to the playoffs, and Tidwell - a perennial postseason qualifier - won’t be back next year and it’s readily apparent that things are out of whack in the Belton athletic department.
Part of the problem is rooted in the accountability chain, which hardly exists in Belton anymore. According to several people at Belton High School, it’s an understood fact that Southern doesn’t have to answer to anybody but Baker.
And it appears that Baker doesn’t always know what’s going on. Tidwell’s impending resignation wasn’t exactly the best-kept secret around, yet Baker said last week that she was shocked when Tidwell came to the administration building to resign.
This entire country operates on a system of checks and balances. But evidently that’s not the case in the Belton athletic department, which has tilted off balance and left the people of Belton to pick up the check.
“The things that are going on at this high school now are things I’ve never seen at other schools,” said one Belton coach, who spoke on condition of anonymity for job security reasons. “Bill Lawson, who was one of the best principals we’ve had here, left because he knew it would be bad if there was no one in control but the football coach.
“And it’s going to keep getting worse until somebody stands up and says, ‘We need to do what’s right.’”
Said another person within the athletic department: “It’s football only. If your kid doesn’t play football - instead they swim or play tennis or something - then they don’t matter.”
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To say that students - regardless of their ability - didn’t matter never was something that could be said about Tidwell’s program. His former players and coaching peers will testify to that.
“Other than my parents, Coach Tidwell is absolutely the No. 1 mentor in my life,” said former Belton pitcher Kyle Matous, a University of Virginia graduate whose next endeavor will be law school. “I still talk to him on a regular basis.”
Brad Turner - a sophomore catcher on the 1994 Class 4A state championship team, a two-time all-state selection and a USA Today All-American his senior year - echoed those sentiments.
“Coach Tidwell has been a father figure to just about every kid that came through his program,” Turner said. “Him stepping down after all those years and everything he’s done, when you read it in the paper and realized it had actually happened, it made you cry.
“He’s done a lot of special things with kids’ lives. He cared so much about his players, and all he wanted was the best out of them.”
A former player, who didn’t want to divulge his name because he’s “going through a rough spot right now,” said Tidwell is still an influence.
“I’m going through some tough times right now, but what keeps me going is hearing Coach Tidwell’s voice in my head saying, ‘Tuck in your shirt, get on the field and let’s get to work,’” the player said. “To this day, what I have to fall back on are the things that he taught me.
“He never compromised what he thought was right. Him leaving breaks your heart because he meant so much to so many players.”
The men who coached with Tidwell and against him feel the same way.
“David is a great all-around person and educator,” said Comal County ISD athletic director Jim Rodrigue, a former Belton AD and football coach who lured Tidwell back from Longview Spring Hill in 1990. “He’s raised some outstanding kids of his own and does the same fatherly things with other kids.”
Similar statements from many players and coaches are so numerous they would fill today’s sports section.
Dick Stafford - a well-respected former coach at Temple and Belton, and the man who hired Tidwell at Belton in 1985 - had a simple summation.
“I was very fortunate to hire David and he is a quality person,” Stafford said. “If you look at the number of players who left his program and went on to play at a higher level, they weren’t born with that. He helped them develop that.
“Belton’s going to be the loser in this.”
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Belton ISD explicitly states on its Web site that one of its goals is to “attract and retain high-performing administration, faculty and staff who reflect the values of the community, serve as positive role models, exhibit moral excellence and are committed to achieving excellence for all students.”
Until the word “retain” is removed from that listed goal, it is nothing more than a flimsy, hypocritical statement.
It’s interesting that Stafford referred to Belton as being “the loser.”
For the 22 years that Tidwell, who will continue to teach, was at the Tigers’ helm, it would have been a fabrication of the truth to use the term “loser” to describe his program or the young men that it produced.
But less than two weeks after his reign ended, a person doesn’t have to stretch very far to make Stafford’s statement.
edrennan@temple-telegram.com
