[The Roamin' Umpire]

Originally Posted by Fon_Win

Commissioner South County: Dan Hinkle:

[email protected]

Just in case you wanted to drop him line.

Chairman's email: Mark Meana, [email protected]

http://www.fcyfl.org/Contacts.asp?sn...&org=FCYFL.ORG

Well, I made the attempt. Here's the message I e-mailed to the entire board:

Originally Posted by The Roamin' Umpire

To the board of the Fairfax County Youth Football League:

I just read the following article by Timothy Dwyer in the Washington
Post online:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/03/AR2006110301819.html

It relates the story of a football team whose coaches were fired
because they did not play the commissioner's son on defense.

The actions and statements of this commissioner, Dan Hinkle, are
despicable and represent the worst example I have ever seen of one of
the chief problems of youth sports. It is my fervent hope that you
remove Mr. Hinkle from his position and ban him from your league until
such time as he gains some clue of the purpose of youth sports.


(signature removed)
Member, Capital District Football Officials Association
Albany, NY

Here are the two replies I have received:

Originally Posted by [email protected]

I saw your message to the article about Dan Hinkle. Before slamming someone, are you totally postive that the article was true? We all know that the newspapers are not bias and always tells the truth. Dan Hinkle has been a part of youth football for 15 years. If he was not good for youth sports this would not be just coming out. No one mentions that the coach did whatever he did to his son just to win a game. Do you know that we have a particpation rule in our league that states every kid must have a starting position? Were you aware that coaches violoate this rule by having kids be placed on offense as substitutions to run in and out plays all game? How would you feel if you paid some 200 bucks for your son to play football and all he did was run plays to the quarterback and runs to one side of field as a wide reiecever and is basically a decoy. I am not saying this is what happened to Dan Hinkle or his son, but I do know for a fact that this coach was reprimanded 4 times for violoating this rule to win a game. Did you know that the team he beat while not playing Mr. Hinkle's son, he lost previously to 2 weeks before by the scrore of 31-0, and all of a sudden he beats them. Wow, he must have made major adjustements to his roster- Then again, how can you do that when you have a particapation rule? You should get the entire story before slamming someone.

Originally Posted by Steve Wilmer ([email protected])

I'm a tax payer in northern VA. It appears you are doing private business, sending emails about Dan Hinkle etc. on government time. What are you doing sending emails from your government computer? My tax dollars hard at work.

So much for a rational response (although neither of these fine specimens of humanity are listed on the league's website). The first person has a point about not having the whole story, but the reporter contacted Hinkle, who refused to comment. And his e-mails speak for themselves. The second one is clueless, since I sent the e-mail from my personal e-mail account.

My conclusion is that I'm glad that I don't work games for this league, and VERY glad that our local Pop Warner league takes sportsmanship VERY seriously and comes down hard on coaches who receive even one unsportsmanlike flag. Crap like this would never be tolerated.