Letter to D9 Leagues and Families
To: All District 9 Leagues and Families
This has been both an exciting and a difficult tournament season in District 9.
Many of you may have noticed that we starting reading Little League’s pledge on Sportsmanship before every tournament game. We also made the decision to restrict electronic streaming devices at our tournaments. We have had a lot of individual conversations with people over the last few weeks but it’s important we talk about it to the whole district.
District 9 is committed to Little League’s goal to prioritize inclusion as an intentional part of our culture. We believe that we can only achieve this when we respect individual differences and perspectives.
Unfortunately, we did not live up to these goals this year. There were several instances across our district where members of our community were targeted by racist language, profanity, and other inappropriate behavior.
It’s important to understand that this not only hurt the people targeted but also all the members of our community that witnessed these events. Let’s be more clear. This hurt kids and it hurt adults. Now we have players that don’t feel like Little League is a safe place for them which means we failed these kids this year.
This is not what Little League is about. This is not what District 9 is about.
Looking forward, we cannot tolerate this in our district. We will be taking a hard look at what happened and how it was allowed to happen. We are going to work with the leagues and get procedures in place to make sure we don’t let these kinds of behaviors happen at the local and district levels. We will make District 9 a safe place for everyone.
Bob Toigo, District Administrator
Janice Christensen, Assistant District Administrator
Rob Little, Umpire-In-Chief
Sharon Curry, ADA
Tonya Henry, ADA
Chris Martin, AUIC
Russ Paul-Jones, AUIC