Bulldogs, as most of you know, there are two youth football organizations in our wonderful community. Each organization participates (obviously) in a different league, each with a different set of by-laws, but both sharing the same objective; to offer a safe and productive organization to teach the youth of our community the sports of football and cheer and to teach the benefits of good sportsmanship. If research has done us justice, as of the 2010 Census the city of Zephyrhills had a population of 13,288 people. Of which, nearly 2,490 were children under the age of 18 years old. Take that information and put into consideration that at most, with full rosters our organization can only serve 280 children under our roster caps, our organization can only serve 10% of our communities youth. Now, think about that for a minute...TEN PERCENT. Where do the other 2,000 kids go? If not for having two youth football organizations in this great community, we would lose those children to Dade City, Brandon, Wesley Chapel, and other surrounding areas. Eventually, also losing them to high schools, when we should be helping feed our school programs with children. The notion of having a scrimmage game against these two organizations has been tossed around many, many times. However, as a board for this organization, we decline all invites and will never consider such an event going forward. I want to make this very, very clear...we are NOT declining due to competitive reasons. We simply decline because such an event would only bring more division to this community and will do NOTHING to make any differences each organization has better. In closing, each organization can thrive in this community, but we as parents, children, grandparents, brothers, sisters and more importantly...residents of this great community, MUST put a solid end to the bickering, gossiping and he said, she said hearsay and mentor these children. Our jobs FIRST and FOREMOST as youth organizations is to serve these kids and teach them to work together...how can we do that successfully, with a community so divided?
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 13:33:31 +0000