Had a good experience our first year at Parkway. But we found out the second year that the league doesn't mean what it says when it comes to sportsmanship and playing by the rules. I was just going to let this drop, but then ran into a mom at Boy Scouts who had a very similar bad experience at Parkway. The league makes a big deal about and pays a lot of lip service to being ?all about the kids? with their parent code of conduct and rules about randomly drafting kids onto teams to make the teams fair. However, we found out the league is perfectly willing to disregard its own rules about returning kids having priority for team assignments if it suits their purposes. I now understand that the league really wants to have one or two ?stacked? teams in each age group that can go to the extra-league tournaments and bring some trophies back to the club house. Sportsmanship and fair play is nice as long as it doesn?t get in the way of the league forming their ?select? teams in each age group. The ?other? teams in the league just serve as cannon fodder for the ?stacked? teams during league play. And the parents on the other teams are just a free source of volunteer labor to keep the league going for the ?select? teams? benefit. A sad example of the stereotypical problem in youth sports when adults live vicariously through their kids? accomplishments on the ball field.
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