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West Ranch’s Ron Manalastas and Canyon’s Sean DeLong, two longtime varsity basketball coaches in the area, were forced to resign midseason last month after disgruntled parents formulated plans to have them removed.

Granada Hills Charter’s Don Loperena could be the third varsity basketball coach removed in a two-month span after an anonymous e-mail to the school’s administration complained about Loperena’s coaching. Loperena’s future is yet to be determined while the school continues its investigation. He did not coach the Highlanders’ two league games this past week.

It shows parents have too much power over the fate of coaches — in any sport — and it’s sending the wrong message to high school athletes. Coaches are “at-will” employees. There’s no union for high school coaches, which means a school — private or public — needs no reason to remove a coach. The gripe could be from how the coach is running practice to wins and loses, or of course, something more serious.

Parents aren’t just wearing down coaches, but some don’t realize they’re creating enormous amounts of pressure on their own child. The countless tweets, highlight videos, messages and social media posts on behalf of your athlete isn’t helping.

When an athlete doesn’t have a 30-point game or skip to the car with a smile after practice, it’s blamed on the coach. Maybe, some parents don’t understand that if an athlete doesn’t want to share their day at practice with you, it’s because the athlete doesn’t want to disappoint you, Mom and Dad.

News flash: Varsity sports can bring challenges. Isn’t that what high school athletics is for? To teach young people the fundamentals of life? Being on time, being respectful, working hard, working with others, and certainly not giving up when things don’t go your way.

In what adult scenario can a small group of people gripe about a boss or supervisor and have them removed so your cubical can be placed by the window?

Not everything can go your way.

While allegations against Loperena swirl on social media, it’s possible that not one parent or player approached him personally first, instead going straight to administration. This is the equivalent to going beyond your immediate supervisor to the head of corporation with a gripe — we all know this is bad practice.

Of course, everyone wants to win, but a midseason removal of a coach doesn’t help, nor does it send the right message to budding teenagers who need to learn that honoring a season-long commitment is still important.

No coach is perfect. No teacher is perfect. No boss is perfect. No parent is perfect, either.

The role of a varsity coach has changed drastically in the past 15 years. A practice plan and a thirst to mold young people isn’t enough anymore. There’s an unrealistic expectation for high school coaches to get each college-aspiring player a scholarship. The same player that can’t dribble with their left hand or misses at least one practice per week comes with a wildly expecting parent in tow.

Some high school parents’ expectations are higher than the potential of their student-athlete. Sometimes a parent doesn’t realize it wants high school success more than the athlete.

But that’s hard to see when each kid has a personal trainer now, and a travel coach that runs the 17-and-under bronze team, because the athlete isn’t good enough to play on the platinum or gold team.

When countless dollars are spent on personal training, it promotes a sense of false capability from the athlete and parents that may not be matched by the high school coach. This generally results in a transfer. However, this year, it seems to have evolved into having the coach removed.

The CIF cracked down on transfer paper work this year, making it more difficult for athletes to move from school to school. Six months later, are we beginning to see a trend in the removal of coaches? I hope these three cases are an anomaly and the transfer era doesn’t turn into an era that sees more parents removing coaches because of their own displeasure.

When was the last time you saw a proud parent of a student-athlete post a report card on Twitter? Never.