I did not know Linda Kilpatrick personally and was never coached by her, but I had coaches like her when I played high school sports – Phoebe Kelly, Bruce Villwock and Lil Shelton come to mind.

Coach Kelly was tough, but she was fair – values that I carry today. She also had no qualms about telling me when I screwed up or needed to get my act together. One time she noticed that I was upset about something – something 21 years ago that now seems trivial – but she took me into her office and gave me some great advice. “Kiddo, things don’t always go as planned. You have to grieve, but you have to get used to it and figure out something else.”

Coach Villwock was similar. Tough but fair, but a person who as a teacher, always wanted each of his students or his athletes to find the best in themselves, even if they weren’t the best athlete or the best singer or the best student.

Coach Shelton coached at our rival high school but each summer held a field hockey league at a minimal cost that brought girls together from all over the county as a way to teach the sport (and maybe to scout her school’s rivals), but she was able to identify talent and encourage it.

People like Coach Kelly, Coach Shelton and Coach Kilpatrick in particular opened the doors for many female athletes in Anne Arundel County, not just because of their ability to influence people but also because they were among the first beneficiaries of Title IX – a federal law that helped pave the way not only for sanctioned girls and women’s sports but also for many of the educational opportunities that women have today. Anne Arundel County administrators need to be smart enough and cognizant of the fact that by pushing out older coaches, they are cutting off a valuable lifeline.

From reading my hometown paper, Kilpatrick was shown the door by an administrator who decided the women’s basketball program at Southern needed to go in a different direction. My father sent me a message that “if you knew Kevin Hamlin, you’d understand.” Hamlin, Southern’s principal, is likely looking at this from a cost-analysis perspective. Or the fact that Southern went 2-22 this season. Or maybe he and a few angry parents simply had a beef with Kilpatrick and chose to railroad her, instead. (It’s happened at other schools in other states. Heck, it happened at my high school in 1991. So this is nothing new.)

This is also indicative of the state of our educational system – are some administrators are intent on producing widgets and prescribing to the dreaded “Common Core” instead of encouraging students to be thinkers and doers, and to question things? Yet what buoys me in reading this article in the Capital is the incredible response of the Southern student body, her former players and female coaches – an example of what kind of impact that a teacher or a coach like Kilpatrick made upon them.

In professional sports, coaches are expendable. They are hired to be fired and can easily be replaced within a small window, usually by a costly recruiting firm. High school coaches – many of whom are teachers or administrators themselves – are not.

One day in 1984, I was sitting at the kitchen table of my friend’s house, eating breakfast that had been prepared by our babysitter. Mom and Dad dropped me off at 7:30 in the morning at the house where we spent much of our summer.

As I finished a bowl of cereal, my friend Mike came down the stairs from his bedroom wiping sleep from his eyes. He was covered in scratches.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did you get into a fight? Did you fall from a tree?”

Before Mike could answer, his younger sister chimed in.

“Mike and Shane tried to put our cat in the kiddie pool. Three times!”

That’s how I found out cats and water didn’t mix, thanks to Mike.

But that was Mike. Mischievous, a bit manic and absolutely hilarious. Here’s an example: At dusk, Mike and his friends would ride their bikes around the neighborhood, armed with a garage door opener, clicking as they drove by houses and laughing as they watched a garage door go up.

Mike had a good heart that had been bruised and broken before he was old enough to know how to handle it.

I found out this week that Mike recently died. We hadn’t spoken since high school; he was a year ahead of me and I had been dismayed by his behavior during his senior year, over a family incident that I didn’t find out about until years later. As much as I wished I could have helped him, I knew better – that it would not have been my place, that Mike was struggling with how to handle his own heartache.

But my memories of Mike are mostly good ones.

When Mike was in the fourth grade, he loved Michael Jackson – so much that he had a sequined glove and learned to do the moonwalk. When he tried to teach me how to do it, he told me I was hopeless at it, but called me “Moonwalker” for a few more years afterwards.

Our birthdays were one week apart; our babysitter and our after-school programs always planned joint birthday parties for us. We’d complain to each other and to our friends that we had to share a birthday cake.

In the eighth grade, our French class went to a local restaurant at the end of the school year for what we called a “fancy dinner.” As we waited for our parents to pick up us and our classmates, Mike and I had a quiet moment together. He looked at me and said, “You know I always liked you, right?”

To an awkward eighth-grader, this was akin to landing your first job. Even though it never happened with Mike and I, other than some kissing and a 14-year-old’s attempt at a grope, what he told me made my confidence soar. He was a sex-obsessed little ninth grader but the following year, we ran into each other after a spring practice and talked in the middle of the driveway in front of our school. We hugged. It was strangely sweet.

Years later, I was listening to a CD in the rec room with his younger sister and her two best friends, when Mike and one of his friends came charging down the stairs of their house. Mike stopped and grinned sheepishly at us. I thought for sure he was making eyes at one of his sister’s friends. A few weeks later, his sister told me that Mike was hoping to talk to me. A few months later, a teammate of mine read an R-rated note he and a friend had written specifically for her. She thought it was the funniest thing. I told her to throw it away.

Mike left Maryland and found a home out west. He married a woman and had a daughter with her. I’d seen him on Facebook, but was never willing enough to send him a friend request. I always got the feeling that he didn’t want to be associated with that part of his life, all the growing up that took place on the corner of Shore Acres Road and Dunberry Drive.

I don’t know what the circumstances were that surrounded his death. I’m sorry that I never took the chance to reach out to someone who played a significant role in my childhood. I’m sorry I never got a chance to find out the adult that Mike became, or the father or the husband. And I’m sorry I never said a proper goodbye to the person I knew and loved, a person who played a role in my own growing up.

Sports On Earth has been a corner of the Internet devoted to longform journalism, analysis and the overall cerebral side of sports. But as of this week, it has been gutted, part of a shift by parent company Gannett to separate digital operations from publishing operations.

Meanwhile, SportsGrid.com states its case of the demise of SoE’s, and blames it on the most primal of urges:

It wasn’t like most sports blogs out there — it was a bastion of smart, well-thought out analysis and profiles. That probably played a role in its downfall.

I don’t know the inner workings of Sports on Earth. I don’t know what politics might be going on behind-the-scenes at USA Today. Maybe this was a long time coming for SoE. Maybe it had nothing to do with content and more to do with, I don’t know, cost-cutting, or someone at the company having a bad hair day and taking it out on its most talented and thoughtful publishing arm.

But here’s what I know about sports media, via our little window at SportsGrid: Where were the tits? Where were the asses? Where was the scandal? Because our biggest hits are invariably posts that involve at least one, and hopefully all three, of those themes.

HELLO? PEOPLE LOST JOBS AND LIVELIHOODS.

Poor Hugh Hefner. He’s losing readers to this kind of clickbait. And poor Paulina Gretzky. I fear that more people know her for her Instagram account than they do for all that her father accomplished as a hockey player. Sportsgrid might also remind me of that little gambling snafu Wayne and Ms. Jones got themselves involved in a few years ago. Sex and scandal, right?

But hey, you got me to click. Congratulations. That’s what constitutes “new journalism,” doesn’t it?

Kate Upton unleashed her inner Gloria Steinem last night … and I sort of love it.

For a woman who has been so objectified – even though I kind of believe she’s in on the joke herself, and that’s a good thing, because to me that shows empowerment and ownership, combined with some self-deprecation – she took a stand.

My friend Tina (see the selfie post) immediately wrote back to me and said, I’m with Kate. And I agreed! Although my tweet didn’t necessarily convey it – and what great messages are sent in less than 140 characters?

As I told Tina, if one of us doesn’t say something, then who will?

Feminism is in a weird place right now – not necessarily where it was 25 years ago, when the mainstream media begged the question, “Is feminism dead?”

Women are asking for equal pay for equal work, and Ohio has become a battleground for reproductive rights. Hillary – a patron saint of women’s college graduates, along with Gloria – is our best bet for the 2016 presidential democratic ticket.

Meanwhile, more young girls are worried about taking the best selfie and can probably name more of the Kardashian sisters than they can the women in Congress or female CEOs.  I attribute this in part to the values that each generation of parents instills in their children – my peers and I are part of a generation that included immigration, the Civil Rights act, the second wave of feminism (my mom was required to wear skirts and pantyhose to work every day as a teacher in the 1970s – now, come on!), Vietnam and Watergate.

People 10-15 years younger than me were the children of Reaganism, yuppiedom, the Iran-Contra hearings, Princess Diana and Miami Vice. And because it seems as if values skip a generation – will we be impressing the values our parents taught us upon our children? –  it makes me wonder what has happened to feminism. Is it in a state of ambiguity? Is it slowly being revived or is it slowly being eviscerated?

Is it necessary for us to still stand our ground? Absolutely.

I’m currently reading “Girls To The Front,” about how the female punk scene in the early 1990s brought out a sect of feminism and empowerment, and allowed girls and young women to have a “safe space.” And I wonder, is there still a safe space for women, without being objectified, marginalized and even ridiculed? Heck, just look at the replies to Kate Upton’s post about the Los Angeles Country Club.

The death of Chatham College for Women really made me think a lot. Esther Barazzone, the school’s president, insisted that we’re reaching “gender equity” but why has Title IX and sexual harassment in colleges and universities become an issue this year? Why is President Obama championing equal pay for equal work? Why are we still being laughed at when we try to create and perpetuate #YesAllWomen, a movement that brings to light the issues that women still face?

With women’s establishments being knocked down and eradicated, we’re not building armies with each other, we’re now being forced to fight against something bigger than all of us. And I worry that instead of us banding together, we’re facing off against each other. And what does that accomplish?

So I really hope Kate Upton’s statement creates a backlash of sorts, or at least inspires people to think, hey, let’s stand up for something. Even if it’s the ham-handed creep at work who ridicules you for having a conversation about the treatment of women, or the commercial that hawks beer by using big-breasted, voiceless women in bikinis.

Kate, I’m with you. Please, continue being a voice. And I’m sorry if my tweet came off as flippant. But those Kardashian girls need to step up their game, like, last week.