Troy High freezes out the hometown press. What's wrong here?

Seven months ago, Troy Record sportswriter Sam Blum wrote a feature piece alleging that women's varsity basketball coach Paul Bearup, a teacher who's been at the school for more than a decade, had inflicted emotional abuse on some of his players.

Since that time, school officials have enacted a blackout on The Record, refusing to grant reporters access to any athletes and coaches. Non-athletic events are still being covered by the hometown paper, mostly because it's usually district-wide activities, but as white-hot as the football team is, any feature pieces on game coverage in the Sunday editions don't have any quotes from coach Bob Burns, who's also running for county legislature, or his assistants or players.

So what does Troy High have to hide, if anything at all? If they felt Bearup was being unfairly slanted by Blum in his article, the least they could've done is refute what Blum wrote, or, at worst, ask for a retraction. A letter to the editor would've helped their case significantly. Instead, the school tarnishes their reputation anyway by being petty and vindictive toward the hometown paper, which, I'm sure, has employed several of their past journalism students through the years. My late journalism teacher would be turning over in her grave if she knew what was going on today.

It's not like The Record is a top grade paper, anyway. Their out-of-state owners are cutting corners to save money, and the issues we've referenced in this space about sports results not being reported started before the current blackout went into effect.

When softball coach George Rafferty was let go prior to the 2016 sectionals, it was the Albany Times-Union that broke the story, and a caller to the now-defunct Sound Off! column provided some details, since The Record didn't have a reporter present for Rafferty's meltdown at Averill Park. After the blackout went into effect in March, boys' varsity basketball coach Richard Hurley announced he was taking a year off from coaching. The Times-Union broke that story, too. Then again, The Record, due to a lack of manpower resources the last few years, has missed quite a few stories.

What it boils down to is this. While Troy High administration has put full support behind Bearup, who will begin his 12th season as girls' varsity basketball coach in December, they should've done the right thing, not only for Bearup, not only for the alumni and parents, but for The Record, and allowed for both sides of the story to be told, knowing how thin the paper's resources are. Instead, they opt to be petty and spiteful toward the hometown paper, and that is just wrong. They'd rather sweep it under the rug, and pretend nothing is wrong. As a Troy High alumnus myself, I find this to be a shameful display of disrespect toward the press. Just shameful.