A golden rule of young people’s sports used to be “it’s not whether you win or lose; it’s how you play the game.”
In other words the value of athletics is all about teamwork and character, not getting the glory.
A Texas youth football league seems to have forgotten that, however, booting a team that is so good that other teams weren’t getting to win enough.
The Flower Mound Rebels, consisting of seven- and eight-year-olds, asked the Keller Youth Association if they could join its league after the pandemic made it difficult to field a team. The team went on to win seven games for a perfect season and racked up a combined score of 199-6.
Then, however, they were deemed too good to play by the association and were barred from the upcoming playoffs. They were deemed as good as a select level team instead of a peewee team, despite the fact that many of the players had never even played before.
“This is the Keller league, not the Flower Mound league,” Rhett Taylor, the vice president of the association, told KXAS-TV.
“In my mind, they’ve dominated our league. My team got one first down all game. And my team is good.”
Ragan Montero, coach of the Rebels, was displeased with the decision and said it worked to Taylor’s advantage. “He’s a sore loser. That’s all it comes down to. He’s changing the rules so it benefits him.”
Taylor’s team lost to the Rebels 33-0.
“They are too good,” he said. “I fully admit it, absolutely.”
Montero looked past the opposing coach’s “praise,” however, and said less than half of the kids on her team had even played football before this year’s season.
“I don’t think we can be too good. 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?”
“I was just very sad,” Greyson Tanner, the Rebels’ eight-year-old center, told KXAS. “I feel like we deserve to play in the playoffs.”
