A family says police escorted them and their 3-year-old son off an i9 Sports youth soccer field in Winter Park after the league issued a trespass, following complaints from opposing parents that the boy held the ball too much and was “trying to put on a show.” The incident, captured in video the family posted
I played soccer at that age, my siblings did too, and my cousins do as well.
When you’re 3/4/5 you’re not playing soccer. There are no rules, positions, score, winner/loser or goalies. It’s “go kick the ball around time”. When the ball goes out of bounds the coaches, who are often just some dad, just give it to a player that has not had a ball in a while. No one is trying to win, there is no ‘win’, it’s all make believe for the kids to have a chance to run around for a while in the sun. If one super-player wins every match, that sucks for every other player on the field including his team since they don’t even get to “win”, there are no winners. They just have to sit around bored with the other team because there is no point.
So the league refunded the parents fee and asked them to not come back (trespassed them). They are no longer legally allowed on the field and for that matter, have no claim to participate in the league seeing as they were refunded. They weren’t kicked out on the basis of race, it was many parents complaining “Hey, I paid ~$600 for ‘go kick the ball around time’, and you are facilitating a situation where my kid doesn’t get to kick the ball”. This isn’t a competitive format it’s gym hour and they are not receiving the product they paid for.
A 3 yearold hogging the ball all game, isn’t doing anything wrong. He’s 3. He’s should be instructed to share more but he isn’t doing something that warrants the cops involvement. The parents however, that understand the situation and failed to correct it / their kids ability to share, do. The adults that received their money back, understand it. The adults that received a trespass notice, understand it. The adults, who the cops talked to not the kid, understand it. The parents of the superplayers here at being assholes and injecting their kid in a situation they already KNOW will cause problems. All the kids are just being kids and the other parents, as far as I can tell, just want their kid to receive the product they paid for.
Too many people in this thread letting their emotions control their opinion due to a scary headline about a subject they apparently know very little about.
If it was a matter and refunding and asking people to leave why was police involved? I can think of 100 ways to handle this without police starting with giving the other kids another ball.
There has been an update. As far as the reason for the call:
A league official told officers that parents were upset about their son’s playing time and that the child would no longer be allowed to participate in the league.
Another entry states that the parents were upset because they believed their child was being criticized for playing too well and was being taken out of the game.
So it sounds like the coach benched the kid at some point, maybe to give the other kids some time to kick the ball, and the parents argued with the coach about it, which led to them being refunded and asked to leave, which they refused to do until after police got there.
In a statement released Monday, the department said a league official requested police assistance with a disturbance between league officials and the parents.
The league had asked the family to leave and offered to refund its fees, according to the statement. After officers arrived, a league official asked them to speak with the family because he did not want to prolong the disturbance, police said.
The family told officers the game was over and they were leaving. Police described the family as cooperative and said officers provided an event number at the family’s request.
The department characterized the incident as a civil matter, not a criminal one. “No one was arrested, trespassed, or forced to leave the park,” the department said.
Source? All the article says is “i9 Sports, which operates youth leagues, camps, and clinics for children ages 3 and up in sports including soccer, has not issued a public statement on the incident. Local police have also not released information confirming details of any call or escort.”
Too many people in this thread letting their emotions control their opinion due to a scary headline about a subject they apparently know very little about.
What you’re describing is not just some more reasonable interpretation of the info in the article. You’re describing facts other people have no way of knowing. It’s not “letting emotions control their opinion”. It’s simply having opinion about facts at hand.
The family states that the league banned them from the field via a trespass notice and that officers then escorted them away in front of the other children. They say they later received a refund for the 2026 fall soccer league registration.
The same article, but what I’m having trouble finding is whether they had been banned before this game or as a result of this game.
you know what, I had assumed that naturally the ban had already occurred and that this was not the initial trespass notice that the cops responded to
if they called the cops and issued the trespass at the same time, that’s weird. if they issued the trespass and then they refused to leave, well yeah duh call the cops that’s what they’re for
Can’t speak for your jurisdiction, but around here, and most of America I think, if a private business tells you to leave and you don’t, that’s trespass. In Florida it’s trespass if you ignore certain property signage. The police don’t “issue” a trespass, it’s automatic.
so if everybody called the cops at the same time as initially trespassing somebody, that’d be weird. like, you tell them to leave, they don’t, then you call the cops
Maybe you can stop repeating this now that the PD is contradicting your claims?
The family told officers the game was over and they were leaving. Police described the family as cooperative and said officers provided an event number at the family’s request.
The department characterized the incident as a civil matter, not a criminal one.
“No one was arrested, trespassed, or forced to leave the park,” the department said.
The fact is the police were called and legal action was taken. Now that it has been escalated to involve the power of state force, that invites a challenge to the charge based on equal accommodations laws.
Considering the state of the society is such that John Oliver’s most recent LWT segment is about neo-nazi entrenchment in the party in power, we can’t look at this incident and not see a racism mattar. We have to consider if the response of the other parents to invoke law enforcement would have occurred if the color of the offending family was a few shades lighter.
It’s always good to check; reportedly, the team is already quite diverse, and black parents were among those filing complaints.
The father had been coaching the child who turned out to be quite skilled, and had enrolled him in a very beginner rec league. He got his viral videos out there and started tagging teams and schools. He got the publicity he was looking for, and the facility had him removed and issued a refund because the child’s advanced training and subsequent skill level/play were inappropriate for their beginner rec league.
. We have to consider if the response of the other parents to invoke law enforcement would have occurred if the color of the offending family was a few shades lighter.
This is not substianted, you can review the videos posted by the father and see the makeup of the team was not primarily white. No other kids were removed from the team.
Yes. As more details of the incident became known to me, my position has evolved. It appears the police were called regarding the behavior of the father, and the response by the police was temperate.
I did add context that one of the primary political parties — the one in power, in fact — is openly white supremacist and xenophobic. Hate crimes surged in 2016 by 68% and haven’t dropped since. Literal lynchings in the US have become conspicuously more frequent.
Even before Trump, police and the justice system have been demonstrably dangerous to black Americans.
So, yes?
Maybe if we wanted to take interracial tolerance in the US for granted, we shouldn’t have voted a white supremacist into office, which Americans did twice, specifically for his racist and white supremacist views. Maybe the response to Brianna Taylor and Heorge Floyd should have followed through on police reform.
I’m not claiming racism doesn’t exist, or doesn’t exist in America, or that the police force isn’t often racist (intentionally or otherwise).
My claim is after looking into all the details of the situation, it’s the unfortunate reality that the kid WAS literally just too good. It’s funny to say but it’s the actual fact. He was too good, and didn’t belong. On top of that the parents were being problematic which is the real reason the cops were called. If the parents just chilled and acted like reasonable adults then nothing would have happened.
A blanket perspective of “A bad thing happened to a non-white person, therefor, the bad thing happened because they are non-white” is barley better than the full throated maga racists and it infantilizes and removes autonomy of non-white people. Sometimes the reality is that non-white people DO deserve the cops called on them. It’s not the case that the police involvement is ALWAYS racist.
They called the police in a situation where the need for police is implausible. There were parents there, yes? I assume they were sober. Why didn’t they manage the situation as might mature adults?
No, they escalated to state intervention, and that means question of equal accommodations can be raised, if the state has laws mandating them.
But it also raises the question of racism, especially if that was the only black family in the group.
Racism doesn’t merely exist in the US, it’s the dominant culture right now. So yes, it’s entirely appropriate to expect it and catalog when it happens.
Not fucking $600 I’m not. That’s a car payment. My friends and I were always able to make do with sticks or fence posts or whatever and organize games. That was before we even had cell phones. You don’t even need organized teams and uniforms for a bunch of little children to just fuck around.
Ok I’ll admit I just rolled with what you said on the price, but turns out that was just an exaggeration.
I just looked it up and soccer is $157 and covers 6 weeks. So about $26 a week that covers the organization, setting up practice, the games, the refs, etc.
Too many people in this thread letting their emotions control their opinion due to a scary headline about a subject they apparently know very little about.
This is my Lemmy experience in a nutshell. I really wanted this to be a good reddit alternative, but it seems kinda like maga for the left. Which obviously is better than maga, but still exhausting.
Living in a society sometimes means suffering opinions and attitudes you don’t like. I know I don’t always agree with the Lemmy consensus.
I don’t think the notions of respecting equal accommodations, and approaching potentially racist situations with an abundance of caution — especially considering the current party in power — is radically left, id est MAGA for the left.
Feel free to block people whose opinions you can’t stand.
The secret is filters. Just block the subs that are all politics, block keywords that are too culture war. Cultivate a bubble and know that it’s a nice bubble where you’re more likely to get genuine people with interesting things to share than any other bubble I know of.
I played soccer at that age, my siblings did too, and my cousins do as well.
When you’re 3/4/5 you’re not playing soccer. There are no rules, positions, score, winner/loser or goalies. It’s “go kick the ball around time”. When the ball goes out of bounds the coaches, who are often just some dad, just give it to a player that has not had a ball in a while. No one is trying to win, there is no ‘win’, it’s all make believe for the kids to have a chance to run around for a while in the sun. If one super-player wins every match, that sucks for every other player on the field including his team since they don’t even get to “win”, there are no winners. They just have to sit around bored with the other team because there is no point.
So the league refunded the parents fee and asked them to not come back (trespassed them). They are no longer legally allowed on the field and for that matter, have no claim to participate in the league seeing as they were refunded. They weren’t kicked out on the basis of race, it was many parents complaining “Hey, I paid ~$600 for ‘go kick the ball around time’, and you are facilitating a situation where my kid doesn’t get to kick the ball”. This isn’t a competitive format it’s gym hour and they are not receiving the product they paid for.
A 3 yearold hogging the ball all game, isn’t doing anything wrong. He’s 3. He’s should be instructed to share more but he isn’t doing something that warrants the cops involvement. The parents however, that understand the situation and failed to correct it / their kids ability to share, do. The adults that received their money back, understand it. The adults that received a trespass notice, understand it. The adults, who the cops talked to not the kid, understand it. The parents of the superplayers here at being assholes and injecting their kid in a situation they already KNOW will cause problems. All the kids are just being kids and the other parents, as far as I can tell, just want their kid to receive the product they paid for.
Too many people in this thread letting their emotions control their opinion due to a scary headline about a subject they apparently know very little about.
If it was a matter and refunding and asking people to leave why was police involved? I can think of 100 ways to handle this without police starting with giving the other kids another ball.
There has been an update. As far as the reason for the call:
So it sounds like the coach benched the kid at some point, maybe to give the other kids some time to kick the ball, and the parents argued with the coach about it, which led to them being refunded and asked to leave, which they refused to do until after police got there.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/winter-park-police-explain-response-164621178.html
Seems it was a parent that called, not i9 Sports.
Just bench the kid? Has no one here coached baby soccer?
According to the comment above yours (that cites a Yahoo article), they did. That’s why the parents were upset and supposedly caused a disturbance.
deleted by creator
Source? All the article says is “i9 Sports, which operates youth leagues, camps, and clinics for children ages 3 and up in sports including soccer, has not issued a public statement on the incident. Local police have also not released information confirming details of any call or escort.”
What you’re describing is not just some more reasonable interpretation of the info in the article. You’re describing facts other people have no way of knowing. It’s not “letting emotions control their opinion”. It’s simply having opinion about facts at hand.
The same article, but what I’m having trouble finding is whether they had been banned before this game or as a result of this game.
Exactly, this says they were kicked out, not that they still came back later. Those are two completely different situations.
you know what, I had assumed that naturally the ban had already occurred and that this was not the initial trespass notice that the cops responded to
if they called the cops and issued the trespass at the same time, that’s weird. if they issued the trespass and then they refused to leave, well yeah duh call the cops that’s what they’re for
Can’t speak for your jurisdiction, but around here, and most of America I think, if a private business tells you to leave and you don’t, that’s trespass. In Florida it’s trespass if you ignore certain property signage. The police don’t “issue” a trespass, it’s automatic.
right
so if everybody called the cops at the same time as initially trespassing somebody, that’d be weird. like, you tell them to leave, they don’t, then you call the cops
Obviously they did not leave, so asking this is moot to begin with, you know, since they did not leave.
Maybe you can stop repeating this now that the PD is contradicting your claims?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/winter-park-police-explain-response-164621178.html
The fact is the police were called and legal action was taken. Now that it has been escalated to involve the power of state force, that invites a challenge to the charge based on equal accommodations laws.
Considering the state of the society is such that John Oliver’s most recent LWT segment is about neo-nazi entrenchment in the party in power, we can’t look at this incident and not see a racism mattar. We have to consider if the response of the other parents to invoke law enforcement would have occurred if the color of the offending family was a few shades lighter.
It’s always good to check; reportedly, the team is already quite diverse, and black parents were among those filing complaints.
The father had been coaching the child who turned out to be quite skilled, and had enrolled him in a very beginner rec league. He got his viral videos out there and started tagging teams and schools. He got the publicity he was looking for, and the facility had him removed and issued a refund because the child’s advanced training and subsequent skill level/play were inappropriate for their beginner rec league.
This is not substianted, you can review the videos posted by the father and see the makeup of the team was not primarily white. No other kids were removed from the team.
Yes. As more details of the incident became known to me, my position has evolved. It appears the police were called regarding the behavior of the father, and the response by the police was temperate.
I love you for this comment. ❤️ The mark of a sage.
“Because police and a black person were involved, we can’t NOT assume it’s racism”
Riiiiiiiight. The fact that this bat shit insane comment is upvoted is an indictment on Lemmy
I did add context that one of the primary political parties — the one in power, in fact — is openly white supremacist and xenophobic. Hate crimes surged in 2016 by 68% and haven’t dropped since. Literal lynchings in the US have become conspicuously more frequent.
Even before Trump, police and the justice system have been demonstrably dangerous to black Americans.
So, yes?
Maybe if we wanted to take interracial tolerance in the US for granted, we shouldn’t have voted a white supremacist into office, which Americans did twice, specifically for his racist and white supremacist views. Maybe the response to Brianna Taylor and Heorge Floyd should have followed through on police reform.
I’m not claiming racism doesn’t exist, or doesn’t exist in America, or that the police force isn’t often racist (intentionally or otherwise).
My claim is after looking into all the details of the situation, it’s the unfortunate reality that the kid WAS literally just too good. It’s funny to say but it’s the actual fact. He was too good, and didn’t belong. On top of that the parents were being problematic which is the real reason the cops were called. If the parents just chilled and acted like reasonable adults then nothing would have happened.
A blanket perspective of “A bad thing happened to a non-white person, therefor, the bad thing happened because they are non-white” is barley better than the full throated maga racists and it infantilizes and removes autonomy of non-white people. Sometimes the reality is that non-white people DO deserve the cops called on them. It’s not the case that the police involvement is ALWAYS racist.
They called the police in a situation where the need for police is implausible. There were parents there, yes? I assume they were sober. Why didn’t they manage the situation as might mature adults?
No, they escalated to state intervention, and that means question of equal accommodations can be raised, if the state has laws mandating them.
But it also raises the question of racism, especially if that was the only black family in the group.
Racism doesn’t merely exist in the US, it’s the dominant culture right now. So yes, it’s entirely appropriate to expect it and catalog when it happens.
deleted by creator
Uriel’s view has changed, this rebuttal i provided is no longer necessary
Not a great concept, but pretty easy to scope out, not like we don’t have video evidence that it wasn’t a black kid on a white team.
Just go to a park…
Yeah but when they get there, there isn’t a marked soccer field with 2 goals and 15 other kids all wearing matching uniforms.
You’re paying for the orchestration and scheduling of the games
Not fucking $600 I’m not. That’s a car payment. My friends and I were always able to make do with sticks or fence posts or whatever and organize games. That was before we even had cell phones. You don’t even need organized teams and uniforms for a bunch of little children to just fuck around.
Well it sure isn’t $600 a month lol. It’s $600 once and covers like 4 months of playing.
$150 a month is still insane for a 4 year old to play soccer.
Ok I’ll admit I just rolled with what you said on the price, but turns out that was just an exaggeration.
I just looked it up and soccer is $157 and covers 6 weeks. So about $26 a week that covers the organization, setting up practice, the games, the refs, etc.
That’s pretty cheap.
Yeah I was responding to someone else who gave that price. $26 is much more reasonable.
Kids are expensive…
Metal gymnastics are strong with this one
to be fair to people, the headline is just lying to us about why the police were called
I think it’s reasonable to expect headlines to be correct, and that the blame lays almost solely on the publisher who is stating incorrect information
I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t think that is a reasonable assumption in 2026.
I don’t think it’s been a reasonable assumption for a long time lol
This is my Lemmy experience in a nutshell. I really wanted this to be a good reddit alternative, but it seems kinda like maga for the left. Which obviously is better than maga, but still exhausting.
Living in a society sometimes means suffering opinions and attitudes you don’t like. I know I don’t always agree with the Lemmy consensus.
I don’t think the notions of respecting equal accommodations, and approaching potentially racist situations with an abundance of caution — especially considering the current party in power — is radically left, id est MAGA for the left.
Feel free to block people whose opinions you can’t stand.
The secret is filters. Just block the subs that are all politics, block keywords that are too culture war. Cultivate a bubble and know that it’s a nice bubble where you’re more likely to get genuine people with interesting things to share than any other bubble I know of.
I thought it would be better than corporate social media. Seeing as there has to be some reason you came here rather than the ‘easier’ options.
But no it’s mostly people just being emotional and slinging mud. I’ve already been called a bigot in this thread even before that wall of text.
You’ll be called a bootlicker any moment now. Wait and see. :)
Lots of downvotes, yet no one actually defending Lemmy.
They know. They don’t like it. But they know.