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Misfortune of High School Tennis Coach: One of the Twelve People Who Still Read the Weekly Is His Boss

ballardten.jpgThe Seattle Weekly pulled feature writer Huan Hsu off the bashing-local-charities beat this week, and instead had him profile the coach of a high school girls tennis team. A coach who is now fired.

Why? Well, let's take a look at the fourth word of Hsu' story: "Sexy."

Hsu leads with the salacious details of a "sensual" poem coach Aaron Silverberg read to his Ballard High charges.

Drinking you in.

Melting you under

my tongue.

Touching you the way

the sea strokes

the shoreline

every few seconds...

We're not experts on tennis, but we are experts on things you can't say to high school girls (our probation ends Friday!). "Melting you under my tongue" is one such thing.

You can choose to believe Ballard's athletic director when he tells the Seattle Times that "there were factors other than the article that led to the dismissal of ... Silverberg," but seeing as how the dismissal came less than a week after the article appeared, well...

The story is well-written and thought-provoking, after you wade through the condescending and purposefully titillating lead. It makes some interesting points about the struggles of (essentially) volunteer coaches, the minefield of high school girl politics, and the nature of pre-college competition.

There's nothing more about sex in the whole piece--the lead hangs out like a neon-flashing sign--a sign that probably got Silverberg fired, and makes you feel dirty for reading the damn thing.

Hsu--or his editors--had to know that leading with sex would get Silverberg in trouble, and they did it anyway, even though it adds nothing to the story. Now the guy's fired, for the sake of a detail that's interesting only to fans of bad poetry and pedophiles.

Stay classy, Seattle Weekly!

Photo from Seattle Weekly is by David Belisle

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.
By Seth in on June 20, 2007 8:50 AM

Comments [rss]

  • max

    Actually, with "talker" stories like this one, more people seem to be reading the Weekly lately.

  • G

    FYI it's "Intents and Purposes"

  • Former Freelancer

    Years ago, I used to write occasional features for the arts/culture section of the weekly. Mark Fefer, the then-arts editor, was ALWAYS pushing to make my articles more salacious ... now that he's editor in chief, this kind of thing is totally unsurprising.

  • Jon

    Got to agree with infrequent. But then again, I remember my HS tennis coach and he was a pretty goofy individual as well.

  • infrequent

    also... what a non-story (until the firing). at least the bad news bears won in the end. or almost won.

  • Trotter

    As soon as I saw the headline and skimmed to find out what it was about, I realized that the coach was, for all intensive purposes, fucked.

  • infrequent

    reading that story made me dislike everyone involved.

  • Mike

    Oh, I agree with that. I get the feeling if anyone had complained privately, he'd have gotten a warning -- but since it blew up in a paper, it was much more embarrassing to the school's administration.

  • Seth

    Agreed--definitely inappropriate. But if you're going to write an article about a high school coach who behaves inappropriately towards his players, do that.



    If you are going to write a non-salacious article--in fact, a quite thoughtful and interesting article--don't throw in the inappropriateness just to give yourself a salacious lead.

  • Mike

    I read that part about his poetry in disbelief. It seemed a *tiny* bit inappropriate -- outside of an actual poetry class, you know, where it could be delivered in a stultifying monotone and actually help turn teenagers off sex entirely.



    How often does this have to happen before crappy writers of erotic poetry get a clue?



    http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2625

  • Matt the Engineer

    Funny, I didn't read the article specifically because of the lead details. Come to think of it, I think I read every other article in the Weekly that day (I hadn't brought anything to read on the bus).

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