Sports
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It was a feel-good sports story that went horribly wrong last month.
The Jackie Robinson West Little League team in Chicago was stripped of its Little League World Series U.S. Championship for having illegally redrawn boundary maps that infringed on leagues around it. The purpose of the redrawing was to incorporate some standout players into the Jackie Robinson Little League for a more talented tournament team, Little League Baseball Inc. said.
The fallout was severe. Jackie Robinson West, an all-black team celebrated in Chicago and honored at the White House for its win last year, was no longer recognized as U.S. champions. Team manager Darold Butler was suspended, and district administrator Michael Kelley lost his job.
It triggered a debate over race and sports with the Rev. Jesse Jackson wondering if the team had been singled out. Nor has the debate subsided; it move into the courts, since the Jackie Robinson Little League has retained a lawyer.
But state high school athletic associations and Little League have for years been penalizing schools and teams for the participation of ringers — players who are ineligible because of age, residence or other reasons. High school athletes who suddenly appear on a school’s roster have been forced to sit out a full school year for questionable transfers into a school zone. High schools have forfeited wins and have been fined. Coaches have been fired over issues of geography.
“It’s been a problem in the past. It will be a problem in the future,” said John Gillis, a spokesman for the National Federation of State High School Associations, about issues related to boundaries and eligibility. “It has been going on for a long time. It is one of the reasons state associations exist,” he said.
The issue of public schools’ using ineligible players is routine in high school athletics and youth leagues. Governing bodies set boundaries to keep the playing field level, so to speak. If a superb athlete who lives across town can drive to a high school just to help make that school win more games, fairness is called into question.
High school athletics have become a big business, with booster clubs paying football coaches tens of thousands of dollars a year in some states. Coaches want to keep their jobs by winning and thus keeping the boosters happy. So they sometimes recruit players from another district or encourage them to transfer. Rules get bent or broken.
Many schools depend on football to pay for other athletic teams at the school that do not generate as much revenue. A successful football program means ticket sales and sponsorships and improving athletic facilities in an era where public funding for high school athletics in the U.S. is being cut. A successful program can attract stellar athletes, who seek the best place to showcase their skills for a chance at an athletic scholarship for college. If it means illegally crossing a boundary, some parents are willing to take the chance.
The pressure to win in Little League Baseball has been ratcheted up by the national visibility and prestige brought by ESPN, which is paying Little League Baseball Inc. $7.5 million a year through 2022 for the broadcast rights. To be at the nationally televised center of sports in the U.S. is a dream come true for parents and their athletic children. Just look at the payoff in adulation for the Jackie Robinson team — a visit with President Barack Obama and praise across Chicago.
In its statement announcing that the Jackie Robinson Little League would be stripped of its title, Steve Keener, the president of Little League Baseball, said, “No team can be allowed to attempt to strengthen its team by putting players on their roster that live outside their boundaries.”
But the Jackie Robinson Little League team is not the first Little League team to be penalized for boundary violations. There were charges of racism surrounding a Little League team from the Bronx in New York in 2001 when it was penalized for various violations. A left-hander with sizzling fastball, Danny Almonte, captured enormous attention at the Little League World Series, throwing a perfect game and striking out 62 batters in the tournament. Investigations in the Dominican Republic revealed he was actually 14, not the 12-year-old wonder he was supposed to be. Just as troubling was that Almonte did not move to the Bronx until halfway through the Little League season. That made him ineligible because of a boundary violation, just like some of the Jackie Robinson Little League players. He had been living in the Dominican Republic and joined the league after the eligibility cutoff date for the All-Star team that went on to the Little League World Series. Little League subsequently banned the founder of the league for life.
At Milton High School, a predominantly white school in the suburbs of Atlanta, David Boyd, the varsity boys’ basketball coach, was fired in 2012 for undue influence. The Georgia High School Association (GHSA) said Milton used summer workouts to evaluate players who were considering transferring to the school. Milton had a reputation as a basketball powerhouse, and players, even some from out of state, would go to the gym in the summer and try out to be considered for a spot on the roster before moving to the school’s zone. The GHSA faulted the school’s undue influence in facilitating housing arrangements of families moving to its zone.
Milton won the state 6A championship in 2011–12. Boyd resigned in September 2012 after a meeting with school officials. Families in the Milton area said their children would come up through the ranks in youth basketball in Milton, only to find a new player on the roster who had moved into the school zone for 10th or 11th grade. The players who had grown up in the system would then either sit on the bench or not make the team at all.
In Arkansas, North Little Rock High School self-reported eligibility issues regarding K.J. Hill, a star dual-sport player, and forfeited 10 wins from its 2013 football season and 24 wins from its 2013–14 basketball season. According to the Arkansas Activities Association (AAA), there was illegal contact between Hill and a booster representing the school and Hill’s stepfather received a $600 check from a booster. In February of this year the North Little Rock School District said it fired Brad Bolding, the football coach connected with Hill’s transfer to the school. Bolding is appealing his dismissal.
And in Florida, The Gainesville Sun reported that Buchholz High School fired its varsity girls’ basketball coach Jan. 30 after a player who attended a private school and lived outside the district was used in games under the name of a junior varsity player. The school forfeited all its games for the 2014–15 season.
The geographic eligibility problem is not confined to the U.S. In 1975, Little League Baseball barred Taiwan (then called the Republic of China) from participating in the Little League World Series after an investigation found evidence that Taiwan was creating superteams made up of players not from a particular community but from all over Taiwan. Little League then barred all international teams that year from going to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, for the Little League World Series. Taiwan won 17 Little League championships in 25 years, frequently by lopsided scores. They were hailed as heroes, but a documentary later confirmed they used players outside their designated league boundaries to create a powerhouse, against Little League rules.
In an e-mail response about the eligibility and boundary issues facing high school athletic leagues, Matt Troha, the assistant executive director of the Illinois High School Association, said many schools self-report residency issues.
“The cases that attract the most scrutiny are when individuals move to or rent a property and transfer to a new school, creating the public perception that the move was solely athletically motivated,” he said. “Whatever the motive, they can often still meet the requirements of the by-laws and become eligible.”
Tim Epstein, a sports law attorney in Chicago, said the Jackie Robinson West Little League is going to have to decide on a course of action to keep its U.S. title in the record books.
“If the coaches did something wrong, against Little League rules, if the parents did something wrong, against Little League rules, I would say you would probably be hard pressed to recover in litigation,” he said. “The stronger argument on their part would be try to make more of a case for estoppel. They can say, ‘We have been singled out.’”
“If they found proof all of these other teams in the past have done it, that Little League Baseball was on notice — that all these other teams have done it — and didn’t do anything about them, but choosing to do it against this team, then maybe you can argue that [Little League is] arguing in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”
The problem for the Jackie Robinson team is that governing bodies in amateur sports, including Little League, have been vigilant for years about boundary violations. Punishing teams for trying to create an unfair advantage with boundary violations is not something that started this month in Chicago.
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