About 30 community members and Cuba Youth Football League parents met on Sept. 24 to discuss the future of the league. The meeting was called after a tense back-and-forth war of words on Facebook about the league's current leadership.

The meeting at Recklein Auditorium began with community members raising questions about the current board, and then shifted to an open discussion about how the league could grow and improve in the future, with Cuba’s high school football coaches volunteering to work with the league.

Some community members who said they had signed a petition seeking the removal of the league’s current president, Samantha Mckimm, and secretary, Kaytee Moreland, said they were upset about how board members have been conducting the league’s business. Several parents said that the back-and-forth on Facebook posts had led to bullying in schools from students whose parents were involved in the arguments. 

“In small towns, we gotta work together for the kids,” said Cyndi Mercer, Parks and Recreation Department President, who moderated the meeting.

“I'm hearing that kids are going to school and being bullied by other school kids because they're sticking up for their parents,” Mercer said. “There's no place for that. It has to stop.”

Current vice president of the board, Ciara Kitchen, was the only current board member present at the meeting and spoke about her frustrations in the program.   

“I’ve only been officially part of the board for a couple of months, but I have seen a lot of things that have been concerning,” Kitchen said. “My concerns have been mismanagement with everything; finances, concessions, comments made about not allowing certain people in, and just a lot of things. So across the board, I have concerns about everything. I think that we need to start fresh, start new, and rebuild from the bottom up.”

Wanda Crawford, whose 8-year-old plays in the Cuba Youth Football League, expressed her concerns about the cleanliness of the current concession stands.

“Last weekend, I donated biscuits and gravy to the concession stand,” Crawford said. “I’ve never been inside, so I was really surprised to see the conditions of this concession stand, considering that they're serving food and fresh food.”

Crawford said that she hopes that these conditions can improve with community involvement.

“I think there's a lot of improvement just on basic sanitation that can happen there with little expense and maybe some basic fundraising and parent elbow grease, because we've got a lot of talent in this room and people who know how to do those trades things that can make that happen relatively quickly, if we have the opportunity,” Crawford said.

Kitchen said that she noticed that the concession stand needed to be cleaned and made an effort earlier in the season to make the area cleaner and more sanitary.

“This season, I reached out to a couple of parents in the group and asked them to come in and help us clean. And we spent two and a half hours there one night cleaning, deep cleaning. We cleaned out the refrigerator, we cleaned out all the cabinets, we deep cleaned, and we rearranged and made it work better and smoother,” Kitchen said.

Mercer moderated the meeting and encouraged community members to reach out to her department if they have any issues, even though the department is not affiliated with the league.

“We're here because we care,” Mercer said. “We do want to see it be better, because at the end of the day, this is our community. So let us know if something is broken, reach out to one of us, and we will definitely get it on our recommendations.”

Mercer encouraged community members to bring up issues at the bi-weekly city council meetings at City Hall.

The Cuba Youth Football League meetings are currently closed to the public. Multiple community members expressed their concerns with it.

“I don’t think they wanted to communicate with us,” one attendee said. “I think that they wanted it closed and to be able to control it, and that was one of the issues going forward. Transparency and parents being involved with the board, and the board being open to everybody being in the meetings, rather than closed meetings, is important.”

Mercer said that closed meetings are not OK, unless for specific circumstances.

“The only time there are closed meetings is when it has something to do with the Privacy Act,” Mercer said. “So when it’s closed, it’s because it’s not critical information for the public.”

Kitchen then raised the issue of financial sponsorships. She said the league had 22 sponsors three years ago and only has two sponsors this year.

“We donated a $300 sponsorship from my work,” Heath Stoutt said. “We were promised a social media shout-out, a banner and our name on Wildcat Manor. We haven’t even gotten a thank you, other than from Ciara (Kitchen).”

Another community member asked about the process of starting a new league. Mercer said that after researching that issue, she learned that the league has been on a recurring contract since 2007, and the city council and the mayor would have to vote to rescind that contract and make a new contract with a new football league before the current contract recurs.

Kitchen said that a new board should be created because of the league’s current standing with the IRS.

“There are a couple of reasons that we need to start a new board, right? Because the 501(c)3 is never going to be in good standing, because we can never obtain those financial records to file the 990s to get that in order,” Kitchen said. “We don’t know where the cash has been going for however long. We have no receipts for anything.”

Some community members then suggested that starting fresh in a new league could be good for the kids in the league. Cuba is currently a part of the Four Rivers Youth Football League, which includes private schools and districts with larger rosters.

“We shouldn’t be playing 6A schools anyway,” Stoutt said. “We haven’t had a winning season in how long?”

Cuba High School assistant football coach and head basketball coach DJ Dace urged the community to use him and his fellow coaches as a resource. The audience responded with a round of applause.

One youth football league parent said that they were told that the high school coaches wouldn’t cooperate with the league. Dace said that was untrue.

“I’ve reached out to coaches, I posted on the Facebook page about the clinics for the coaches, all kinds of stuff,” Dace said. “We got nothing from not just the board, but the coaches as well. Reach out to us and use us.”

Dace was referring to himself and Cuba varsity head football coach Kaleb Cason.

“We both grew up in this league. We want this league to succeed,” Dace said.

He went on to say that the league would need equipment for middle school players and at least six volunteer coaches in order to join forces with the high school team. There are currently just three paid coaches at Cuba High School. If this became a reality, Cuba football players would now have five or six years' worth of coaching and mentorship from the high school, which would seemingly help both programs.

“I’m willing to take the time out of my life to help these youth coaches,” Dace said. “Any type of certification or training requirement would also be a great step forward, one that gives you help with some liability stuff as well.”

The conversation then pivoted back to the issue of the lack of transparency claimed by some parents regarding finances moving forward.

“If you go back and you look through community football or parks and recreation, you'll find a 2021 projected budget, an actual budget,” Crawford said. “I love Facebook. Everybody loves Facebook, right?  But I would like to see a new board website so we can find this information easily and not have to scan through 10,000 Facebook pages.”

Josh Evans brought up some of the positives and negatives of the current leadership and concluded by saying that arguing online isn’t helping the situation.

“First off, I want to say that what Kay and Sam did at the board before what they’ve done here; they brought flag football here. They made the program better,” Evans said. “It's gone downhill lately. We can all agree. If something needs to change, it's time to break their stuff down, and the new ones should come up because of the nonsense. But all the stuff on Facebook, all this arguing, talking down to people; it's not helping. At the end of the day, this is all for our kids.”

Another parent said that implementing a cheerleading program would be a great idea.

“Our girls are playing football now,” one parent said, which was responded to by laughter.

Another parent responded that a cheerleading program would be a great idea, noting that the woman who ran it in the past had to step down years ago.

The meeting wrapped up with Mercer complimenting the group for its cordial communication during the meeting and encouraged the open dialogue to continue.

“Don't let this good momentum stop you. I think you guys were very productive. I think you guys have some great ideas,” Mercer said.

The meeting attendees planned to talk further at Frisco’s Grill and Pub on Sept. 26, but the Cuba Free Press was unable to attend.

Since last week’s article the Cuba Free Press has learned that the petition to remove the current President and Treasurer was created on Sept. 12 and not Sept. 15. The Cuba Free Press has also now seen private text messages from the current board members to parents that stated that family members and friends weren’t allowed at practice, and could only sit in their cars to watch.

As published in last week’s paper, the board then posted on Sept. 13 to the Cuba Youth Football page that practices weren’t closed, but parents and observers couldn’t be on the sidelines.