SPERRY, Okla. — A local youth football coach is taking legal action after his 5th and 6th-grade team was suspended from playoffs, after another coach on the same team, got in trouble with the league.
Will Collier started a GoFundMe to raise money to cover the legal fees, saying it all started when a Sperry coach was accused of filming a game between two other teams, and Sperry’s 5th and the 6th-grade football team was suspended by the KanOk Youth Football League.
Collier says the team was suspended in a way that goes against the league’s bylaws, and only the coach should be punished, not the players.
“This goes on in so many different places in youth sports and people don’t want to go through the trouble of actually taking action and stepping up and standing up for what’s right," says Collier. "And we decided we are going to just stand up to them and do what’s right.”
The GoFundMe description alleges board members for KYLF, the Dewey Youth Booster Club, and town representatives worked together to prevent Sperry, an undefeated team, from playing in the championship game.
Collier says the league’s bylaws don’t lay out a clear punishment for recording another team’s game. And he says the decision to suspend Sperry was made through a town rep vote.
“So, they ended up having a town rep vote," says Collier. "Which goes against their bylaws because the bylaws say that board members of the league have to determine disciplinary actions. So, they went against their bylaws by recommending a punishment, that doesn’t even exist within the bylaws, in a way that the bylaws don’t allow them to do.”
Collier also says the suspension is affecting Sperry’s booster club. We reached out KYFL's president, who is also the coach of Dewey’s 5th and 6th-grade football team. He told me he wasn’t part of the vote to suspend the team, and the championship game was already scheduled to be held in Dewey, so Sperry wouldn’t have benefited. Collier says it’s the playoff games where they could have made a couple thousand dollars.
But Collier says the money is the least important part because the players are taking the brunt of the punishment. A youth football coach from Pryor reached out to Collier to schedule a game, so the Sperry players could play one last time.
“They volunteered to just come to Sperry. As a fundraising type of event and to give our kids one final chance to play because they never got that chance of finality. They didn’t know that last game they played. They had no clue that was their last game.”
Collier says that Sperry vs. Pryor game will be Saturday, at 7:30 p.m.
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