Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 17, 1994 TAG: 9408100030
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Games' softball coordinator, Ben Lockhart, said the youth turnout was held down because Dixie Youth, a national sanctioning organization, cited Dixie Youth rules and forbade its teams or players from playing in the Games.
That decision, Lockhart estimated, kept as many as 150 girls out of the Games.
The rule prohibits play in other ``organized softball leagues'' during the Dixie Youth season. Frank Kallio, who helps coach a Cave Spring Dixie Debs (16- to 18-year-old) team, appealed to Dixie Debs commissioner Danny Fletcher, arguing the Games competition isn't a league.
Fletcher rejected that argument. When Kallio appealed that decision to Dixie Softball, Inc. president Obie Evans, he received a faxed reply telling him to abide by Fletcher's decision ``in order to not jeopardize your Dixie softball franchise.''
Lockhart said his organization - the Petersburg-based United States Slow-pitch Softball Association - would have sought a court injunction to allow Dixie Youth teams into the Games had a team wanted to challenge the ban. None did, but the issue may not be dead.
``I'm certainly tempted to push it,'' Kallio said, ``simply because it's such an idiotic thing, and, basically, it's illegal. How can you tell a recreational athlete where they have the right to play?''
A similar legal challenge worked in the early 1970s, Lockhart said, when the American Softball Association tried to prevent its teams from playing in USSSA events.
Ben Metheney, president of the local Dixie Youth organization, said he thought the rule was on the books to protect the integrity of local leagues.
Coincidentally, the Dixie Debs World Series is being held in Salem in August and, Kallio said, probably will include a national board meeting at which the issue could be raised.
Even without the youth teams Dixie banned from the Games, Lockhart said the youth turnout nearly doubled (from 21 teams last year to 40).
COOPERATION: The Games' baseball competition, which was marked by an American Legion ban on players in the Commonwealth Games last year, got under way without that hassle this year.
Roanoke's three American Legion baseball teams are off this weekend, allowing local players to compete in the Games' all-star event without choosing between it and their Legion teams. The issue became public last year when several local players, against Legion team rules, skipped their Legion games to play in the Commonwealth Games.
Posey Oyler, baseball chairman of Roanoke American Legion Post 3, agreed not to schedule Legion games this weekend after pleas from the Games' baseball coordinator, Wally Beagle, and Cave Spring High School booster Skip Salmon.
``We thought we'd try to accommodate them and see what happened, and if it interfered [with our teams], we'd have to go back our way,'' Oyler said.
by CNB