Youth soccer spat causes deep rift in Seattle school

A dispute over whether an elementary school soccer team was unfairly stacked with talent has sparked a deep divide both internally and with officials for the Archdiocese of Seattle’s youth sports league.

Two dozen 6th grade girls say their hopes and dreams for a soccer championship dashed by what some are calling a “purely political” move by the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO).

The girls are members of one of two teams at St. Joseph School on Capitol Hill. Two different teams were created because the school had to field a record turnout of girls who wanted to play, coach Ken Mooney told the Dori Monson Show.

Mooney says CYO rules limit teams to 25 players, and rather than cut any of the girls, the school split them into two squads. But after playing the entire season and winning a playoff game last weekend, CYO officials declared Mooney’s team ineligible, nullified their victory and disqualified them from playing in the semi-finals, leaving the youngsters on his team heartbroken.

“I was like bawling. We worked our butts off for this, so I don’t think we deserve it,” 11-year-old Henrietta Waltz, a member of the “White” team, told Dori.

According to Mooney, league officials determined his “White” team was unfairly assembled with the best players at the expense of the school’s “Blue” team.

Some parents of kids placed on the Blue team complained to school and CYO officials. But he says coaches and teachers went out of their way to make sure the two teams were balanced, ranking players by ability and dividing them evenly after a lengthy assessment.

“We had a team of three or four that helped with the assessment. We had a teacher from St. Joe’s. We had the athletic director, myself and another coach,” he said.

Mooney’s team finished the season 7-0-1 and qualified for the playoffs, while the Blue team ended the year 2-4-1, losing to all four teams that made playoffs.

As he prepared for Sunday’s game, Mooney got word out of the blue from CYO he would have to merge the two teams and put all 29 girls on the roster for the playoff game the next day.

“They didn’t even give us 24 hours,” he said.

It would have been a nightmare to make it work. League rules require every girl on the team play at least 10 minutes per half.

“There was no way I as a coach could sub in that many people,” Mooney said.

Even more frustrating, no one from CYO officially notified the school of its last minute decision.

“It was a casual conversation made to the coach of the blue team after their final regular season game, which they won, at their post-game celebration,” he said.

Mooney consulted with the school’s athletic director and principal, who ultimately decided it would be unfair to the girls on the white team and send the wrong message, and refused to merge the two teams.

In a letter to Tauno Latvala, the director of CYO athletics, Father John Whitney, St. Joe’s principal, points out the school followed all of the rules and CYO failed to act on an anonymous complaint about the teams dating back to late August.

“It seems to me that CYO – and not the white team or St. Joseph – failed to act in a timely fashion addressing the issue of fairness brought to you at the beginning of the season; CYO failed to offer a rational (indeed, any) argument as to why it was now permissible to violate a clearly stated rule of CYO sport; and you intruded yourself into the inner deliberations of the St. Joseph program in a way that has caused unnecessary heartache and hardship,” he wrote.

Whitney called on CYO to postpone the playoff game the white team was ordered to forfeit while the matter was resolved.

In response, Latvala said there was no time to reverse the decision, leaving the white team out of the playoffs.

But Latvala told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson in an interview Thursday league officials watched the blue team for several weeks and determined there was a huge disparity in talent that unfairly favored the team.

“In our assessment of the situation we felt that there was a significant enough talent difference that the talent split was not equal,” Latvala said.

According to Latvala, league rules emphasize protecting kids and the competitive integrity of the entire league, and the CYO soccer committee determined allowing the team to continue playing as assembled would be unfair to everyone.

“It is very hard, but we have to balance not just the kids at one particular school or on one particular team but with all the kids in their program and all the kids in the CYO,” he said.

The committee ultimately determined that merging the two teams was the best remedy to allow the girls to continue playing while ensuring the team was more evenly assembled heading into the playoffs, Latvala said.

Mooney acknowledges it’s a seemingly trivial matter, but says it’s extremely important to the girls, who worked tirelessly throughout the season to improve individually and as a team.

“This was a light in their life that brought them happiness and joy and you saw it magically gel on the field through both practice and their interaction at school which turned into a magnificent season that was going to drive them to the championship,” he says.

“I think when you say, ‘Why would I squash someone’s dream, take away somebody’s hope and do this to somebody with really no reason?’ I think it’s a conversation worth having so it doesn’t happen again.”

Henrietta tells Dori she’s heartbroken to not have a chance at the title after all she and the team have been through.

“My coach wanted me to work really hard and I practiced on my own four nights a week, and I kicked about 100 free kicks into a goal and got much better. I scored my first goal a couple of weeks ago. It was the best feeling I ever had.”