A private school in Texas whose girls’ basketball team contended for a state championship last year has fired the team’s coach days after the girls defeated a winless team of students at a school that caters to people with “learning differences.” The score was 100-0.

Good for Covenant School. The coach, Micah Grimes, is the poster child of unsportsmanlike conduct. He shouldn’t be leading any team of impressionable youngsters.

As the coach of my son’s recreational soccer team, I’ve had the unpleasant experience of putting a team of inexperienced players on the field against talented opponents trained by a coach like Grimes. That they easily defeated us never bothered me; that their coach and players made sure they won by the largest possible margin allowed by league rules did. And if not for the league rules, I’m certain that the coach would have scored as many goals as possible.

Even worse than the coach’s determination to run up the score was the behavior he tolerated in his players. In one game, the coach’s son hooted like a monkey while chasing our players on defense — and that happened after the opposing team had the maximum five-goal lead. The players acted the same way as a team after the post-game handshake.

In competitive sports, there is nothing wrong with winning and even winning convincingly if there is a good reason to do so — having a wide enough point margin to get into the playoffs or win home field advantage, for instance. But the best coaches in any sport are those who teach their players not only how to play the game how to be decent human beings.

Coaches like Micah Grimes, who did not try to “kill the clock” or stop his girls from shooting 3-pointers late into the fourth quarter, teach exactly the opposite. They should be shown the door.