Letter to youth sports officials

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by euby

I didn't mean to go off on a long tirade but as you can tell I get alittle erked when youth volunteers get bashed.

If they do not want to get bashed, then they should run their leagues better. It is not like people here or anywhere has not formed opinions on youth sports based on what they hear. Most officials that cannot stand youth sports and leagues are based on their personal experiences. Then it does not help when you have coaches that behave in such a way that are suspect at best. Remember there was a football coach just a few weeks ago that assaulted a child during a game because all because he felt "his" child was hit late on a play. So do not make it sound like all of these opinions about youth sports are in a vacuum and no one has knowledge of some pretty bad situations.

Originally Posted by euby

Its very easy to develope bad habits and hard to break once you have them. An offical who does both types of games have to be very diligent in there separation of the two "types".

This can happen in Men's Leagues too.

If it bothers you the attitudes of these leagues, then you need to go around the country and change the way leagues are run all over the country. The football league that I have worked for about 3 years and will work some this fall had many internal problems with the board and when they used specific rules that were outside of any rulebook, the league would give conflicting information to their coaches and the officials. Every week would be a fight over striper rules or procedures that were essential to playing the games fairly. I was never alone in my experiences and this is why many guys would quit officiating all together because of some of these very bad situations they were put into working youth sports. Youth sports is where many start on some level and this is why most officials leave these leagues when they get more HS games or they break into college ball.

Peace