This league is a joke. I signed my son up in June. Around the third week of July we found out they had been practicing for three weeks and they never bothered to call us and tell us. The team moms or whatever they are who are responsible for spreading information to the parents have dropped the ball over and over again. It took them 7 weeks to get a helmet that fit my son.
From day one the favoritism has been so blatant they are basically just throwing it in your face every practice. The head coach spends the entire practice with the same 6 kids every day. The only 6 kids who have EVER been given a chance to touch a football since my son started practicing in July. You can take a guess as to how many of those kids have fathers who are coaching. The rest of the coaches basically just go through the motions. They constantly set up mismatches where they will have the 7 biggest kids on the team lining up against the 3 smallest kids on the team. Someone is bound to get hurt, these coaches seem to be trying to make up for some moment in high school where coach didn't put them in the game and they lost state. My son may not be the strongest, or the fastest kid on the team, but he was far from the weakest or the slowest. His effort level is just as high as any of the kids on the team. He is an amazing baseball player, every coach he has ever had has fawned over his effort level. My kid is no slacker he busts his ass every practice, even when they have have 3 kids who weigh 20lbs more than him slamming him on his ass 20 times in a row while his coaches just stand there and do nothing to protect him from getting hurt.
We woke up at 6:30 this morning to go to a football game in Chino and my son played for a total of 4 minutes. Meanwhile there are about 6 kids who NEVER came out of the game. The pathetic coaches are so desperately trying to "win" that they sacrifice the self-esteem of almost every kid on that team. Keep in mind they WE DO NOT KEEP SCORE. These are SIX YEAR OLD CHILDREN and half of them get to play about 5 minutes out of 60. One of the coaches kids is the biggest bully on the team, every parent and kid i've talked too about him says they can't stand him. He is constantly shoving kids from behind after he gets beaten and he never gets in trouble for it because his dad is a coach. Another of the coaches kids spends about half the practice crying and the other half running to the fence because he doesn't listen or participate yet every single game this kid is in on at least half of the plays. We spent 250 dollars to sign my son up for the Jurupa Mammoths, we've spent about 500 dollars of our own money on fundraisers, donations for the team and buying lots of mammoth gear so the team has everything it needs and I feel like we have gotten nothing in return. 99% of the time my kid is either trying to block one of the coaches (yes, my 45lb son is going up against 200lb men as if he is going to learn anything by doing that) or tackling trash barrels. REALLY?! TRASH BARRELS?! I played pop warner football when I was a kid and I played in high school and I can honestly say i've never tackled a fucking trash barrel. If it weren't for the fact that I have always instilled the value of sticking to something you committed yourself too I would pull my kid from the team. I'm not raising him to be a quitter so he is going to stick it out until the end of the season but we will not be coming back.
I personally have been coaching my sons tee-ball and training baseball teams for 5 seasons in a row and i've learned a thing or two about what a coach is supposed to be. The kids are 3-7 years old. The coaches job is to help their self-esteem, to build their confidence, teach them to exercise and most importantly have some fun. But my sons coaches are so fucking focused on trying to win a game in which the score is not being kept that I feel the children are the ones who are paying for it. There is a time when you start getting harder on kids and expecting more of them. A time where the kids are old enough and mature enough to understand that they are just not as good as some of the other kids and that the main goal of the team is to win but not when they are six years old....give me a fucking break. read more