Point of View: One More Thing

Three of East Hampton’s most admired coaches of the past generation — Jim Nicoletti, Ellen Cooper, and Kathy McGeehan — appeared in wholehearted support of Lou Reale, the ousted championship and award-winning softball coach, at the school board’s organizational meeting on July 14 — Bastille Day.

And while the turnout for Coach Reale was impressive — there were upwards of 60 there — the battlements were in the end not stormed. (That the “pros” outweighed the “cons” by about 97 percent apparently failed to persuade.)

But at least the “mess” surrounding Coach Reale’s forced resignation, as one board member, John Ryan Sr., called it, had somewhat of an airing, in contrast to the usual the mute rubber-stamping by school boards of administrative decisions.

The superintendent, Rich Burns, said he had taken it upon himself to overturn the athletic director Joe Vas’s recommendation that the 20-year veteran be rehired after having been “inundated over the past month and a half” by Reale’s detractors and supporters.

(At one point, apparently, during that span, Mr. Burns said he would second Mr. Vasile-Cozzo’s recommendation, and then, apparently following further meetings with interested parties, decided he wouldn’t.)

The overwhelming turnout of the “pros” was interesting to me, for when I used to cover public hearings held by the town and village boards it was always the other way, with the antis’ numbers far exceeding the pros’. If the antis in this case felt so strongly, as Mr. Burns indicated they did, you would have thought they’d have shown up.

Coach Reale is still in the dark, as far as I know, as to all of the allegations made. At the very least, he ought to have been given a chance to respond to them by the superintendent, who at the meeting, with his lips pursed and his voice lowered, hinted that the partisans would change their tune if they knew what he knew.

As to allegations of “verbal abuse,” it seems strange that players dating to his early years here, players who presumably were subject to the same “abuse,” would come out to praise him.

Mr. Ryan, when asked the next day if he thought the board might override Mr. Burns — as apparently it can — said he didn’t think there was enough support, though he did not altogether rule out the possibility of an override, or the possibility of a vote on the matter that would put everyone on record.

One thing for sure, as Mr. Nicoletti said, the coaching situation here is in a perilous way, given the fact that on three occasions in the past 18 months — in the cases of R.J. Etzel, who had moved back here from Miami so that he could coach varsity baseball, Steve Redlus, the former varsity football coach, who had initially promised “a total rebuild” of that program, and now Coach Reale — the superintendent has effectively disempowered the A.D.

I doubt that it used to be this way. Mr. Nicoletti said he couldn’t remember similar instances in the past.

It’s as Hughie King has often said, “The inmates are running the asylum.”