NWLL baseball scandal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's what's missing: Why does Little League even have eligibility boundaries in the first place? No other youth sport does.

It's a direct legacy of Jim Crow. Little League began when racial segregation in every aspect of American life was the norm. Neighborhood boundaries were a proxy for race when residential segregation was enforced by law.

DC Department of Parks and Recreation regulations prohibit the use of city-owned facilities by organizations that discriminate. The DC Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of residential address. DC should enforce its laws and put an end to this.

Didn’t realize this. This is a good point.

There's no reason DC couldn't have one Little League for the whole city. Let kids play for whatever team they want to.

Good news. DCPR offers baseball. You do you.
https://dpr.dc.gov/release/dpr-open-registration-spring-programs-tuesday-march-1

Is it run by the NWLL? The guy works for DCPR [not sure what capacity - but it does feel like there is a conflict there]

The bigger conflict is that the other coach of the 12y summer team is a baseball coach at GDS. He also runs for-fee training sessions for NWLL and does private coaching. Funny, but the waiver and show-up last minute kids are GDS students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any word from DC little league? I think some families would like a statement before the start of the quickly approaching season.

Yeah, the email response from other board members did not include any substance.

[Anonymous]

What is the agenda of these 2 high powered lawyers? I feel bad for their kids

[Anonymous]

Looks like ther agenda is fairness? And bringing cheating to the light.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's what's missing: Why does Little League even have eligibility boundaries in the first place? No other youth sport does.

It's a direct legacy of Jim Crow. Little League began when racial segregation in every aspect of American life was the norm. Neighborhood boundaries were a proxy for race when residential segregation was enforced by law.

DC Department of Parks and Recreation regulations prohibit the use of city-owned facilities by organizations that discriminate. The DC Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of residential address. DC should enforce its laws and put an end to this.

Didn’t realize this. This is a good point.

There's no reason DC couldn't have one Little League for the whole city. Let kids play for whatever team they want to.

Good news. DCPR offers baseball. You do you.
https://dpr.dc.gov/release/dpr-open-registration-spring-programs-tuesday-march-1

Is it run by the NWLL? The guy works for DCPR [not sure what capacity - but it does feel like there is a conflict there]

The bigger conflict is that the other coach of the 12y summer team is a baseball coach at GDS. He also runs for-fee training sessions for NWLL and does private coaching. Funny, but the waiver and show-up last minute kids are GDS students.

It was our experience that the “problem” coaches and teams were largely out of one public school (and very anti-private)
but they all later matriculated to GDS.

[Anonymous]

I get having non-parent coaches has some significant upsides when it comes to the AS team. But I’ve never understood why the NWLL board permitted parents to pay for private lessons with the coaches. It seems to scream conflict of interest, but it’s been going on for years in plain sight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's what's missing: Why does Little League even have eligibility boundaries in the first place? No other youth sport does.

It's a direct legacy of Jim Crow. Little League began when racial segregation in every aspect of American life was the norm. Neighborhood boundaries were a proxy for race when residential segregation was enforced by law.

DC Department of Parks and Recreation regulations prohibit the use of city-owned facilities by organizations that discriminate. The DC Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of residential address. DC should enforce its laws and put an end to this.

Didn’t realize this. This is a good point.

There's no reason DC couldn't have one Little League for the whole city. Let kids play for whatever team they want to.

Good news. DCPR offers baseball. You do you.
https://dpr.dc.gov/release/dpr-open-registration-spring-programs-tuesday-march-1

Is it run by the NWLL? The guy works for DCPR [not sure what capacity - but it does feel like there is a conflict there]

The bigger conflict is that the other coach of the 12y summer team is a baseball coach at GDS. He also runs for-fee training sessions for NWLL and does private coaching. Funny, but the waiver and show-up last minute kids are GDS students.

GDS is a strange instance where the school used to be in the NWLL boundary when the lower school was located in Palisades. The new location is now in the CCLL boundary.

If a GDS kid started at NWLL and played continually, they can get a waiver to remain at NWLL. However, no kid that has not played LL before and is using the school location for LL should be able to waiver into NWLL. In fact, the rule is if you stop playing even for a season, then you now have to play LL where you are in-bounds.

Obviously, if you live within the NWLL boundary it does not matter where you attend school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's what's missing: Why does Little League even have eligibility boundaries in the first place? No other youth sport does.

It's a direct legacy of Jim Crow. Little League began when racial segregation in every aspect of American life was the norm. Neighborhood boundaries were a proxy for race when residential segregation was enforced by law.

DC Department of Parks and Recreation regulations prohibit the use of city-owned facilities by organizations that discriminate. The DC Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of residential address. DC should enforce its laws and put an end to this.

Didn’t realize this. This is a good point.

There's no reason DC couldn't have one Little League for the whole city. Let kids play for whatever team they want to.

LLI doesn’t allow it. You could play a different type of youth rec baseball, but you would not be allowed to call it LL.

There are restrictions on how many kids reside in certain geographic boundaries before you have to create a new LL.

You can share the same overhead. McLean LL shares the same overhead but technically has two LLs based on where kids reside and go to school. I think they call it American and National and they field two different all star teams.

What's the number? There are definitely LL's that have more players than all the DC LL's combined.

Where? Name 1.

Darien, CT LL. According to Google 1474 enrolled players.

NWLL and CCLL have around 700 players in each league (the number above is from 2010 and includes softball as well). You also literally selected the league that has the most players in the entire United States.

I don't know what to say...LLI dictates most of this. Satchel Paige LL is adjacent to CCLL to the East of the City and can barely field one team in each of their divisions, yet LLI will not allow it to consolidate into CCLL. The boundary rules are strange with respect to how many players/teams are in a league, how large the overall population is in the boundary, how large the overall population is in the adjoining boundaries, etc.

NWLL and CCLL used to be one league (CCLL). LLI told them they needed to break into two leagues in the 1980s because of whatever rules they cited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any word from DC little league? I think some families would like a statement before the start of the quickly approaching season.

Yeah, the email response from other board members did not include any substance.

It also did not include all of the remaining NWLL board members.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sad. I’ve always thought that LL should get rid of all-stars. My boys are aged out of LL, but in our league, all stars was the center of so much drama and bad behavior by the adults. Team stacking/rigging the player draft, political maneuvering to get AS coach positions, backdoor negotiating and favors traded regarding which kids get picked for AS, even favors trades for certain defensive positions ON the AS team. Basically the entire year was spent setting up for all stars, with serious talks/maneuvering by coaches and parents starting up to a year or even years ahead of time. The regular LL season was basically an afterthought- just going through the motions for alllll stars.

No sour grapes either- my kids were usually selected bc of their pitching ability

Board members in our league usually only stay for their kids’ time in the league, and many only volunteer to increase the chance their kid gets picked for all stars.

Little league would be better off without all stars IMHO. Just have an extended summer season for the kids who want to play rather than centering around just a few- after all, the majority of kids never make an AS team.

IMO All Stars should be limited to the kids who only play LL and not also travel concurrently. The travel players, especially the ones who come back just for this age, are taking away from other kids. Their families made a decision not to play LL and/or to play travel in theory for a more competitive environment--just stay there then, or leave LL post-season endeavors to the truly recreational players for whom things like All Stars are intended.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have found coach Davenport-Thomas to be honorable in all my dealings with him. Both my kids played NWLL and he was, if anything, willing to take kids on his team that other coaches didn't want. He is also super patient with entitled parents making unreasonable requests. It is a shame some people are so quick to assume he cheated.

Sincerely,
Norman Sanin

Cheated, treated other board members with disrespect and was a tyrant who screwed over the kids of one of the complainants. Were you one of the parents who showed at the board meeting uninvited?

Did you even read the document? What do you have to say to his bending the rules when it benefits him? It didn’t bother you when he made up numbers in his assessment of a player that were too low yet he drafted him. I don’t have a player in these league but I believe the accusations and I believe he’s never answered any questions in a reasonable manner. Davenport and parents like you who defend this garbage based on your limited experience with him ruin everything. You derail the normal process that provides checks and balances that ensure things are on the up and up.

Go stick your head back in the sand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have found coach Davenport-Thomas to be honorable in all my dealings with him. Both my kids played NWLL and he was, if anything, willing to take kids on his team that other coaches didn't want. He is also super patient with entitled parents making unreasonable requests. It is a shame some people are so quick to assume he cheated.

Sincerely,
Norman Sanin

Cheated, treated other board members with disrespect and was a tyrant who screwed over the kids of one of the complainants. Were you one of the parents who showed at the board meeting uninvited?

Did you even read the document? What do you have to say to his bending the rules when it benefits him? It didn’t bother you when he made up numbers in his assessment of a player that were too low yet he drafted him. I don’t have a player in these league but I believe the accusations and I believe he’s never answered any questions in a reasonable manner. Davenport and parents like you who defend this garbage based on your limited experience with him ruin everything. You derail the normal process that provides checks and balances that ensure things are on the up and up.

Go stick your head back in the sand.

At least Mr. Sanin has the courage to identify himself publicly on this thread.
You?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have found coach Davenport-Thomas to be honorable in all my dealings with him. Both my kids played NWLL and he was, if anything, willing to take kids on his team that other coaches didn't want. He is also super patient with entitled parents making unreasonable requests. It is a shame some people are so quick to assume he cheated.

Sincerely,
Norman Sanin

Cheated, treated other board members with disrespect and was a tyrant who screwed over the kids of one of the complainants. Were you one of the parents who showed at the board meeting uninvited?

Did you even read the document? What do you have to say to his bending the rules when it benefits him? It didn’t bother you when he made up numbers in his assessment of a player that were too low yet he drafted him. I don’t have a player in these league but I believe the accusations and I believe he’s never answered any questions in a reasonable manner. Davenport and parents like you who defend this garbage based on your limited experience with him ruin everything. You derail the normal process that provides checks and balances that ensure things are on the up and up.

Go stick your head back in the sand.

At least Mr. Sanin has the courage to identify himself publicly on this thread.
You?

P!as off. I don’t have kids in any of the leagues mentioned here.

You’re still going to ignore his cheating, lying, faking documents and player ratings? If you’re ok with that just because your kid was treated favorably, you are as much a part of the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I get having non-parent coaches has some significant upsides when it comes to the AS team. But I’ve never understood why the NWLL board permitted parents to pay for private lessons with the coaches. It seems to scream conflict of interest, but it’s been going on for years in plain sight.

Maybe because some of the coaches also need to make a living because they’re not law firm partners on the side. The little league coaches are volunteers, and if they’re good hitting or pitching coaches, why should they not give lessons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get having non-parent coaches has some significant upsides when it comes to the AS team. But I’ve never understood why the NWLL board permitted parents to pay for private lessons with the coaches. It seems to scream conflict of interest, but it’s been going on for years in plain sight.

Maybe because some of the coaches also need to make a living because they’re not law firm partners on the side. The little league coaches are volunteers, and if they’re good hitting or pitching coaches, why should they not give lessons.

Running the league for the benefit of the coaches rather than the kids is the root of the problem.