Posted on 11/22/2021 5:28:38 AM PST by DrHFrog
Last year, when it was hard to field a team during COVID, Flower Mound joined a league from nearby Keller.
Rhett Taylor, vice president of the Keller Youth Association, said the group’s five-member board decided the Flower Mound team should be ejected from the playoffs – even though they’re the top team.
“This is the Keller league, not the Flower Mound league,” Taylor said. “In my mind, they’ve dominated our league.”
Taylor also is a coach and a father. His team lost to the Rebels 33-0 this season.
“My team got one first down all game,” Taylor said. “And my team is good.”
The Rebels’ coach, Ragan Montero, said Taylor and the Keller Youth Association are trying to change the rules in the middle of the game.
“He’s a sore loser. That’s all it comes down to,” Montero said. “He’s changing the rules so it benefits him.”
Taylor acknowledged the decision was made because of the Rebels’ dominance.
“They are too good. I fully admit it, absolutely,” he said. “They are a select-level team. They are too good for a rec-level team.”
Montero disagrees and believes it’s sending a bad message to the kids.
“I don’t think we can be too good,” Montero said. “He wants to play with us but he doesn’t want us to be good. I’m not really sure what that teaches the kids. Hey, try your hardest but sorry, you won’t get the end result you want?”
The Keller Youth Association said the Rebels are still welcome to play their final game this weekend but told them they wouldn’t be allowed in the playoffs – no matter their record.
For the young players, it’s a confusing lesson about what’s fair.
“I want for us to actually just finish our games,” Tanner said. “That’s truly all I want. I’m new to tackle football and the shotgun.”
For the Olympics, I suggest that the Gold Medal winner be disqualified, and the prizes be awarded to the 2nd place, 3rd place, and 4th place finishers.
(liberal) We all want a good experience, and getting pounded doesn’t make me happy. (/liberal)
With this one final game allowed...I’d take the team into it and tell them to go for 100 points. Be relentless. Then I’d tell the ‘league’...shape up the best of the best from the other teams, allowing them an extra player on the field and still promise to beat them by ten points.
Maybe Florida should hire this guy.
In other words, they make everyone feel badly, like the losers they are. They want to drag everyone down to their level and when they cant they gang up on the one and take revenge. Now the winning team feels badly, it’s only fair in the eyes of a loser.
I actually can understand this. Several years back I coached a hockey team that dominated their opponents. At the beginning of the year I suggested we move up into a better division, but was overruled by the parents and the board. So we played in our division, went 20-0, won outside tournaments against teams two levels up from us and ultimately won the championship.
I would have rather gone 10-10 playing in a more advanced division than going 20-0 against far inferior opposition.
Interesting story. My experience coaching youth sports is that when one team is completely dominant, there was something going on with how the teams were picked (someone got to load up on talent, or someone has a few kids that are over the age/weight limits). There are often a team or two in a league who just don’t get that it’s serious, so they don’t really practice, but 1-2 should at least be kind of close. It sounds like Keller doesn’t take things as seriously as Flower Mound. It also sounds like this might be something of a select team from Flower Mound. New to the shotgun? Is it 1975? New to tackle football? Step one: teach tackling.
I guess they didn’t have a “Mercy Rule” in place. We played a couple of seasons in Michigan. Up there, if a team goes up by three touchdowns, the losing team can select three of the winning team’s players and put them on the bench. I didn’t necessarily agree with it, but it kept the games a little closer.
Maybe they will allow Michigan to do that against Ohio State.
The mother of all disconnects.
I wonder if this a case of a 5-A team playing 1-A competition in a 1-A league. If so, then they shouldn’t be allowed to play in a 1-A playoff.
It sounds to me like this might be the right thing. Leagues have different talent levels. It is the responsibility of the coaches and parents to make sure their team is in a league where other teams are competitive.
It should have been clear to these guys early, and for sure is now, that they had a different level of not just players, but commitment ( training facilities, coaches, and schedules which make them better). That they were taking a more serious approach then the teams who practices twice a week for a month before the season that they were beating up on.
If I was a parent paying for my son to be on a “select” team, (and it ain’t cheap for sure) I would want the team to play other teams near the same level. Not beat up on rec teams - and not get better.
Maybe it was hard for them to find the right league during the pandemic, but hey, this is Texas and fore sure there are other more competitive leagues you can find now. And if you want to play more games now, find a Tournament. Maybe you have to drive 2 hours instead of 1 for a game. That’s the commitment you signed up for.
I suspect there is more to this story.
This is TEXAS, not Vermont. It’s not a state overrun with liberals, it’s a conservative state that takes football seriously.
Youth leagues work hard to keep their teams competitive. Sure, there’s some variation between teams, but for the most part if everyone follows the rules things even out.
But, when one team dominates the others in a youth league as this one is doing (scoring 199 points vs only 6 for opponents), you can be sure some chicanery was involved.
• When players were being distributed between teams, how did all the best players magically get assigned to this one team?
• Does this team has a slew of players that should be playing in a higher level league (due to age or experience).
• Is the team adhering to the league approved practice schedule, or is it over-practicing, and thus giving it an advantage?
Looks like the Flower Mound team is mostly white, if not all white. So of course they are not to be recognized for being good.
I thought this was high school football, where you play for the school you go to.
This actually happened to my daughter’s 4th grade girls softball team. They were like the Bad News Bears, but when push came to shove, they managed to win the final tournament game by a few runs against the team that was unbeatable by anyone else, and were strong contenders to win.
Our girls beat the “unbeatables” by 2 runs at the end of the 10th inning, as was the customary inning for the score to be tallied in the books. After it was played, the commissioner said it was such a joy to watch the girls play, could they please play another inning because the time had passed by “so quickly”. So our girls agreed to play another inning, thinking that they would go home with the trophy as the best team that year.
They not only played one inning more, they played until the other team had more runs finally. It took 2 more innings for that to happen. After 12 innings, everyone was tired and very hungry. People were ready for this to be over. There were families with younger children in tow, and there were no more concessions opened,
Guess who took home the trophies for the best team? You guessed it. The team that hadn’t been beaten the entire season, until our little upstarts did.
We told our girls that this was a big life lesson. Sometimes the adults in charge cheat. We couldn’t change anything.
We all know who won the real first place trophy. Our girls did.
Changing the rules after play has started is cheating, and changing the rules after play has ended is even bigger cheating.
Ole Miss is a good team this year.
How would they stack up against the New England Patriots?
The guy’s team is a good team—for his league. The other team, for whatever reason, is simply playing down—playing in the wrong league.
Oh man... I hope Michigan mops the floor with them. Can’t stand Ohio State (the team we hate).
I can’t think of anything worse than a Georgia-Ohio State Championship Game, I think I’ll just skip it.
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