Self esteem kids not fit for Georgia State Patrol

I have written before of my disgust with the self esteem politics that I encountered on a brief foray into recreation football coaching many years ago.My coaching partner and I worked hard to teach the boys football.We had to teach most of them left from right. We wrote large Ls and Rs on the hands of some who just didn’t get it. When the first practice was over, the boys went and got in the backs of our trucks for rides home.I was shocked. There was little parental involvement until game day when every dad and most moms were better coaches than us. But that is a column for another day.I was equally shocked when I found out at our first game that they were not keeping score.To lose would hurt the precious self-esteem of every kid on the losing team. There were to be no losers ‘“ bless their precious little hearts.After the game, I asked every kid what the score was. They all got it right ‘“ even the ones with Ls and Rs on their hands.I provided the recreation director with this information to no avail. He had been indoctrinated.After that season I washed my hands of it.So did a lot of others. Travel teams sprung up and the serious players migrated to them. Though there are great rec teams and rec coaches out there, programs in many areas are still reeling from that migration.Many foretold soft lives ahead for the ‘˜self esteem kids’ and those who embraced that mindset.Fast forward over 30 years and take note, if you will, of the problems the Georgia State Patrol is having filling its ranks.We are woefully short of state troopers. Deputies can wait up to an hour for a trooper to arrive to work a serious wreck. Many sheriffs have now trained their own personnel to handle all but the most serious, fatal crashes.The Atlanta Journal Constitution recently took a look at trooper recruiting. What it found was nothing short of alarming. Over 2,700 men and women applied to be troopers last year. Only 30 made it.To get into trooper school recruits must be able to run a mile and a half in 15 minutes and 34 seconds. They must do 21 pushups in one minute and 31 sit-ups in one minute. As the AJC noted, these require some grit but are not Olympian standards.Most recruits can’t make it though they know the requirements in advance. One instructor described those standards as ‘weak as puppy pee’.Some 2738 people applied. Only 485 made it through the initial evaluation. Of those, half could not pass a criminal background check. Another 25 percent could not pass the fitness exam. Medical and psychological exams knocked out even more.Forty-two started trooper school. Of those, 30 graduated.Col. Mark McDonough of GSP told the AJC that finding trooper candidates is a nationwide problem. He doesn’t mince words. He says people just aren’t as tough as they once were.’These days, everybody gets a pizza and a trophy just for showing up. That grit from previous generations is just not there anymore,’ McDonough said.That mindset can be traced back to the nonsensical worry over the self esteem of young athletes that began years ago.If you sow weakness, you reap weakness!