There’s no doubt that Plant City lost a great man last week, when Buddy Bennett died.
Many who spoke of Bennett, whether on the phone, in email or on the Internet, found dozens of ways to say the same thing about the longtime Plant City Dolphins president’s commitment to the program: He was in it for the good of the kids.
I’ve only been here since September 2013, so I didn’t know Bennett as well as many of you readers did. But if there’s one thing that I do know, it’s that Bennett was a living, breathing representation of what youth sports, not just football, should be about.
Sure, not everyone who will become involved with the TCYFCC football and cheerleading teams, the Plant City Little League and every other youth sports organization will have Bennett’s level of commitment. To find someone with that level of dedication is exceedingly rare these days. (Thank goodness that there are still many great coaches in this area.) But to have Bennett’s motivation to get up every morning for so many years, make sure everything is perfect and then come home after dark was unique.
I would hope that every coach, board member and parent who comes through a youth sports league shares Bennett’s morals. These are sports meant for kids, played by kids, and they should be just that — not means for the adults in charge to seek out glory for themselves.
Perhaps you’ve read the news recently and saw that the Jackie Robinson West Little League team was stripped of its 2014 United States championship last week after it was revealed that the adults illegally used players from out of the team’s pre-determined district. It’s not nearly as bad as the Danny Almonte scandal of the past, but still a clear violation of the rules. And now, the kids are paying for something that they couldn’t possibly have stopped.
Almonte was a 14-year-old pitching phenom from the Dominican Republic who was playing in, and dominating, the 12-year-olds’ game in 2001. It was revealed that his parents falsified documents a year earlier in order to give Almonte the advantage.
In Plant City, I’ve gotten concerned emails when some of our local youth sports teams have won big games and tournaments, happening as recently as Christmas. I spent about half of the week investigating some allegations. (That one turned out to be a false alarm, and I haven’t heard anything about it since just after Christmas Day.)
It’s sad that, in today’s youth sports scene, there are so many cheating scandals and allegations that there’s a shadow cast over every good accomplishment, every trophy raised or game won. I wish it weren’t that way, because these sports are supposed to be all about the kids having fun. This is supposed to be about kids growing as both athletes and people, making great memories on and off the field and friends for life. But, nothing’s that simple anymore.
And the kids can’t do anything about it.
Crooked coaches and parents seek to manipulate kids to prop themselves up but, in the end, it’s the people who always do the right thing that will be remembered fondly for decades. That’s why, when we all forget about the next youth sports scandal that makes the news, we’re all still going to remember what great things men like Buddy Bennett have done for our community.