Weight rules frustrate players

Inconsistent weight limits for youth football teams across Florida are often frustrating to players eager to take the field.

By LORRI HELFAND, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 7, 2002

Vincent Stona was catching his breath after a half hour of jumping jacks, pushups and sprints when his teammate, Brian Ackerman, led the Countryside Jr. Cougars youth football team to the scale in the equipment room.

"I don't know why they're weighing us now," Vincent, 12, remembered thinking Tuesday evening.

He had not been on the scale in more than a month. He had been told there were to be no more weigh-ins. But with a final Pinellas game on Sunday, he started to worry.

"It kind of made me wonder what they were doing," he said. "They just took us there and I said, 'Oh no, not again,' " he said.

Vincent had already battled a weight issue at the beginning of the season. He was 131 pounds and had to whittle himself down to 118 to play for the Cougars in the Mighty Mites division.

But even after stripping to his underwear, athletic girdle and socks Tuesday, he weighed 129. That's six pounds too heavy to play in Sunday's game, his coach told him.

The last-minute weight requirement angered parents of the players as well as volunteers of the league, which is called the Suncoast Youth Football Conference and includes the northern half of the county. One league official even resigned in anger.

The situation has put some kids in the middle of a battle between two Pinellas Little League organizations. And it points to the inconsistencies among leagues across the state.

"Every organization has different weights and different ages," said Roger Baker, president and chairman of the board of the Jr. Cougars. "There may be a hundred different organizations in Florida."

In this case, the Jr. Cougars are playing the Gibbs Jr. Gladiators Sunday for the right to face a Hillsborough team the following week in the Game Day of Champions at Raymond James Stadium. But the Gibbs team plays in another conference -- the Pinellas Youth Football Conference, which covers the southern part of the county. And that league has imposed weight limits.

Geneva Waters, president of the south county league, said allowing heavier players is unsafe. Just because the north county league does it, she said, doesn't make it right.

"Suncoast dropped the ball," she said.

After some last-minute negotiations Thursday, the two leagues agreed the new weight limit for both teams for Sunday's game would be 123 pounds.

Since they got the news, Stona's father, who is also named Vincent Stona, said his son has been on the Atkins diet, a high-protein, low-carbohydrate regimen. On Thursday Vincent ate a couple of eggs for breakfast, half of a salad and a diet Vanilla Coke for lunch and four ounces of chicken and with a side of broccoli for dinner.

After two-hour football practices this week, he did half-hour sprints on the treadmill at home after school. And in the mornings he popped in his mother's aerobics tape.

Vincent said he'll try to keep his head up even if he doesn't make the 123 pound limit.

"I will cry, but I'm going to root my team on," he said. "You have to leave that behind. It's very upsetting. You have to root that team on to go to the absolute championship at Raymond James."

If his team wins Sunday, Vincent may play at the championship a week later anyway. There are no weigh-ins for that game.

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