Steve Christilaw: Is taking shortcut to winning worth losing one’s integrity?

We’re obsessed with winning.

We talk about people with a “winning” smile, and we enter negotiations looking for “win-win” situations. Our favorite accolade? Winner.

We talk constantly about “doing what it takes” to get a win, and it turns out we’re willing to excuse a good deal if it means getting that win.

Take the case of former Bellevue High School football coach Butch Goncharoff, for example.

For more than 16 years, Goncharoff coached the school to 11 state Class 3A championships and, at one point, a 67-game win streak. In 2012 Sports Illustrated magazine dubbed him its National Coach of the Year.

But reporting from the Seattle Times, and an investigation by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, revealed some alarming allegations – including illegal recruiting and payments to athletes. The Times investigation uncovered the use of a Bellevue “diploma mill” that made sure certain players maintain their eligibility to play football – including three Bellevue players who went on to play Division I college football at UCLA, Arizona and Washington.

There were payments to coaches by the school’s wealthy booster club, including some $425,000over a five-year period.

It’s not a pretty picture, and the WIAA came down hard on the school, banning it from postseason play for four years and vacating two of Bellevue’s state championships. On appeal, the sanction was reduced to two years.

Goncharoff was out as coach.

But it wasn’t as simple as that. That booster club? It fought hard to get him reinstated and to overturn those WIAA sanctions. To them, the ends obviously justified the means.

You know. Because he won. Never mind how.

In the world of high school football, few things are permanent. Schools from Texas and California came calling on the ousted coach. They wanted a winner and didn’t care about the particulars.

As it turns out, Goncharoff didn’t have to go far. He ended up 10 miles away from his home in Medina, an affluent Bellevue suburb, coaching Class 1A Cedar Park Christian. The school said it was “truly blessed” when it announced his hiring in January.

Ousted by Bellevue in 2016, back on the field in 2017. Not a long time there for contrition, unless you count going without the $60,000 annual payment Goncharoff was reputed to get from the Bellevue booster club.

To its credit, Cedar Park Christian has acknowledged that hiring the controversial coach is “the elephant on the field.” There were plenty of open conversations between concerned parents, the school administration and the coach.

But in the end, a school that hasn’t had that much success on the field recently opted for the potential Goncharoff represents for the program. Let’s hope they have a clear set of institutional controls in place.

There are those who cast this as a story about second chances and opportunities for redemption. I can see the point, but I don’t think the optics square with the facts.

This wasn’t nickel-and-dime stuff, and it wasn’t a violation of just one or two rules.

I don’t know Butch Goncharoff. I don’t know his side of this story. But I do trust the Seattle Times’ reporting.

If hiring a Butch Goncharoff is the answer for whatever athletic program you’re building, you’re probably asking the wrong questions and are settling for a shortcut.

But you see it all the time, especially at the college level.

There are no shortcuts when it comes to building a winning program. Not if you’re doing it the right way and for all the right reasons. If you’re honestly looking to mold young men and women into the solid citizens and role models we want them to be, you have to be a role model yourself.

I have found that the coaches who are most successful at building a long-term successful program are the ones who first build a winning culture. Teaching Xs and Os is part of it, sure, but first they teach players to be good people.

You hear them talk about concepts like “servant leadership,” where team leaders work to serve their teammates and put the needs of the team ahead of their own. I like to think of it as the Spider-Man principle of the athletes: to whom much is given (talent, skill, ability), much is expected.

A perfect example is what Kieran Mahoney has done with the Central Valley cross country team – a program favored to win a second state Class 4A championship Saturday in Pasco.

The Bears placed second at state last year and almost the entire team returned.

But instead of resting on their laurels, Mahoney challenged his top runners to work with and help their teammates get faster.

A cross country team is only as good as its 3-4-5 finishers, and the Bears turned theirs into anything but also-rans.

The bottom line is this: There are no shortcuts to real success, and if you compromise your integrity along the way in an effort to get there faster, all you’re really doing is compromising the program.