The inmates have won again with the resignation of Spruce Mountain High School boys’ soccer coach Larry Thornton after one (ayuh, one) game at the helm.

Yes, I know we live in a kids-are-awesome, adults-are-wrong society, and that I shouldn’t be surprised.

As someone paid to follow these patterns, however, I can’t help but notice that some cities and towns buck that trend, avoid that scourge and actually support the men and women who lead their academic and athletic programs.

Others habitually suffocate their coaches, micromanage their every move between and outside the lines, and generally treat them as interchangeable parts — even those with proven, repeated winning qualifications.

Over the course of the past three decades, the towns that feed into Spruce Mountain have devolved into the latter. As someone who grew up with strong ties to both sides of the boundary, it makes me want to cry. As a critic of what our society, schools and social activities are becoming, it makes me want to yank out what’s left of my hair.

I’m not sure when or how such a blue-collar, prideful place became so concerned with making nice and making sure all its precious progeny receive equal playing time at all costs, but it did. Once a place that gobbled up championship hardware and all the requisite headlines, it’s now a trap that eats up coaches.

New coaches. Good coaches. Great coaches. Since the mid-1990s, just off the top of my head in no particular order, there have been Bob Fitzgerald, Mike Henry, Chris Bessey, Mark Bonnevie and Gavin Kane.

Good men who have steered programs to state championship games, all. Each, at one time, either railroaded or made to feel utterly unwelcome or outright pressured to resign. Others — current football coach Walter Polky the prime example — have narrowly avoided attempts to send them packing by the hair of their chinny-chin-chin.

And now Thornton, the guy who built the Livermore Falls soccer program in a football-rabid town where most couldn’t identify a soccer ball from a golf ball, is gone. His second tenure is over before it started; a casualty of the “gotcha” society of perpetual victims we’ve become in the short time he was away.

So often these controversial dismissals, whether they’re firings or mutual separations, happen in board rooms or locker rooms. They can be swept off the back porch because schools can tell the townspeople or the media, “there’s more to the story,” and we’re in no position to argue.

Executive session. It’s a personnel matter. Blah, blah, blah. The death of transparency.

In Thornton’s case, sorry, no such luck, RSU 73. I was there. Watched the game in which some of your players fought valiantly through the heat while others chose to sit beneath the canopy. Witnessed Thornton’s behavior, which both of us would acknowledge was imperfect. Saw the melodramatic reactions of many who surely influenced this “resignation.”

I knew he was screwed, essentially, because I know the world in which we live and the towns in which Thornton used to coach.

Here’s the shortest possible version of the story:

With the final seconds dwindling from the clock in a 6-1 loss at Leavitt, Thornton called over his counterpart, Isaiah Davis. He shook the hand of the Hornets’ coach and explained that his team would forgo the traditional post-game handshake so that he could address his team immediately.

Mistake? Absolutely. But not a professionally fatal one. I’ve seen the shake skipped before, for reasons ranging from a game-ending hockey scuffle to hyperactive concerns over the H1N1 virus, for Pete’s sake.

Thornton then ordered the 11 players who finished the game to stand on one side of him and the players who ended it on the pine to gather on the other.

Unorthodox? Sure. It probably violates that sacred, modern team concept that no player is more important than any other. Of course, here in the real world we know that’s a load of hooey, both in sports and life. There are stars and there are role players. There are tough people and there are wallflowers. It’s reality. Might as well acquaint kids with it now instead of putting them in a utopian bubble that eventually will be burst.

Then the yelling began, accentuated by Thornton pulling — OK, dragging — three of his starters who played all 80 minutes from Circle A to Circle B as a means of lauding their dedication.

Did this violate the relatively new and wholly unrealistic idea that a coach is never supposed to put his hands on a player? Oh, I imagine. Judging from the jaws on the ground, someone arriving late to the scene would have thought Thornton had committed a horrible crime. The only shocking part of this response was that cell phone cameras didn’t come out, en masse.

Yes, it was inelegant behavior. Thornton admitted as much five minutes later when he apologized to me.

There was no need. Having grown up watching legendary coaches John Taglienti of Jay and Ron Beedy of Livermore Falls and observed their nationally renowned football rivalry, I had to suppress a laugh. Those two wouldn’t have survived a season under this ridiculous microscope, either.

Thornton resigned rather than deal with the aftermath and all its inherent foolishness.

Thirty years ago, nobody would have blinked. Any students who felt “violated” by this action wouldn’t have gone home and whined to their parents, because their response would have been worse than anything a coach could dish out.

Now, children and enabling mommies and daddies are in charge. When it comes to policing some of the gross evils in our society, that’s progress. When it comes to sports, it’s the death of sanity.

Here is what should happen Monday: The athletic director and principal should implore Thornton to stay. Then they should gather players and parents and say, yes, we will be watching, but this man is your coach for the remainder of the season. If you don’t like it, there are a dozen doors in this building.

What actually will happen: An emergency, interim babysitter will be assigned to this absurdity. And another good coach and good man will give up the avocation, probably forever.

When the inmates win, we all lose.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.

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