Struggling to preserve their program and national prominence as a Pop Warner power, the Dorchester Eagles yesterday lost a preliminary legal effort to permit their undefeated Midget team to compete for local, regional, and national titles.
The Eagles argued in Suffolk Superior Court that the Midget team should not be subject to a three-year ban from postseason play the program incurred after its Junior Midgets brawled with a rival team from Rhode Island last December during Pop Warner Super Bowl week at Disney World. The Eagles have sent teams to the national championships seven of the last eight years.
Punish the teenaged Junior Midgets, not the 11- and 12-year-old Midget players who were not involved in the melee, the Eagles argued.
But they failed to persuade Judge Frances A. McIntyre to issue a preliminary finding that Pop Warner Little Scholars, Inc., which governs nearly 7,000 teams nationwide, inappropriately applied the three-year ban to all six teams in the Dorchester program.
“My greatest congratulations to the [Midget] team for their performance this season,’’ McIntyre said, “but I can’t change the outcome that was set in place nearly a year ago because that would not be right, fair, and just.’’
Valerie Kloecker, a lawyer for national Pop Warner officials, argued that Eagles coaches had signed documents acknowledging their programs would forfeit their postseason eligibility if their teams engaged in misconduct. She said the Eagles received much harsher penalties than the Rhode Island team, whose coaches were placed on probation for a year, because Dorchester players instigated the brawl and were unsupervised at the time.
Eagles coach Terry Cousin disputed the findings and said he will ask a federal court today to permit the Midgets to participate in the eastern Massachusetts playoffs. He said national officials acted arbitrarily and unfairly in assessing the severe penalty on Dorchester’s entire program.
“We’re going to keep fighting,’’ Cousin said after McIntyre issued her ruling in a courtoom packed with Eagles supporters.
The Dorchester Midgets finished the season 8-0, including shutout victories over the two teams scheduled to advance to the playoffs Thursday in their absence: Malden and Mission Hill. The Eagles allowed only one touchdown in eight games.
Cousin asked McIntyre to order Pop Warner to alter the playoff system to allow Dorchester, Malden, and Mission Hill to compete in a round-robin tournament, with the winner advancing. But the judge declined to intervene.
“I appreciate that it’s a very painful lesson to try to explain to the children on the [Midget] team that they are suffering the consequences for the [Junior Midget] team,’’ she said, “but it does teach the lesson that in team play every team member is responsible for everybody else.’’
The Eagles filed a lawsuit last week against the national office to recover financial damages they allege they have suffered because of the three-year ban. Cousin said the program has experienced a sharp drop in participation (from more than 200 players to fewer than 100), as well as reductions in advertising revenues and charitable support. The program has served as a vital alternative to the streets for many Dorchester children and has helped several youths attain scholarships to private schools.
McIntyre, while praising the Dorchester program’s mission and the Midget team’s “classy’’ gesture last weekend in rallying around an injured opposing player, said a jury likely would extend the national office considerable latitude in trying to prevent the inappropriate violence too often associated with youth sports.
