How not to cut a player on your basketball team

Cutting a player because he’s not good enough to make the team — standard operating procedure. Cutting a player’s hair because he didn’t score enough points — not standard operating procedure.

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From the Omaha World-Herald:

The mother of a Yutan High School basketball player who was punished for not scoring enough points said she believes her son’s coach should be replaced.

Kristi Peitzmeier said [Feb. 8] that a two-game suspension was too light a consequence for the actions of varsity coach John Arensberg.

Peitzmeier told the Yutan school board that her freshman son was embarrassed when Arensberg gave him a haircut in front of his teammates after a December game against West Point-Beemer.

“I think he should be removed from coaching,” Kristi Peitzmeier said. “He had no right, no permission, to do anything of that kind.”

John Arensberg is learning that just because Kristi Peitzmeier is a Yutan High booster doesn’t mean she supports everything that happens in Yutan High athletics.

Peitzmeier said she was told by her son, who is still on the team, that Arensberg expected an easy win over West Point-Beemer in a Dec. 29 game. The coach went so far as to tell certain players how many points they must score.

Yutan won the game 49-48.

“This isn’t about us being disgruntled over playing time or anything like that,” Peitzmeier said. “This is about a player being humiliated in front of his teammates.”

She said the coach cut a second player’s hair a week later.

Arensberg had no comment to the World-Herald about his Samson-and-Delilah-ish motivational techniques. However, if the basketball coaching thing doesn’t work out, with his ability to combine cutting boys’ hair indiscriminately in an athletic backdrop, he could always get a job at Sport Clips.