Due Diligence

Doing it is one thing, proving it is another

By John Engh
Photos: NAYS

Lawsuits in youth sports is an issue that understandably stirs fear and anxiety among administrators these days, but it is an important subject in which those in the industry need to be educated.

Just in the last couple years I have seen a string of lawsuits covering a variety of ages and sports. There was a youth-football program where two coaches—one for older kids, the other overseeing a younger team—decided to run a practice together. One of the younger players was injured while being tackled by an older, bigger boy, and the city, league administrator, and coaches from both teams were all named in a lawsuit.

A baseball coach in Florida was sued when a child on his team was hit in the head with a stray throw. The child had been standing outside the dugout and wasn’t wearing a helmet. In another incident, an 8-year-old child on a soccer field was playing with friends after a game in Louisiana and ran into the gate latch on an open fence, sustaining serious facial injuries. The coach and the administrator for the league were sued. And in Oregon, a city and the staff members of a parks and recreation department were named in a suit after a coach was convicted of sexual crimes; it was discovered he had abused children in the program years earlier.

And now an incident in New Jersey is grabbing headlines in which a coach has been sued for telling a child to slide into third base during a game. The youngster broke his ankle and is expected to have lifetime complications from the injury.

I was questioned in depositions as a witness in some of the lawsuits above. While all these stories are tragic, the question is whether they were preventable. And if so, who is at fault? In some cases, people make bad decisions, which can be attributed to many factors. Can coaches really be trained to not make decisions that seem illogical? I remember answering one of the lawyers by saying that we “don’t train coaches to not hold practices on a highway!” He wasn’t amused, but he got my point. Administrators can’t be responsible for everything!

We know that accidents happen, and we can assume common sense isn’t always as common as we’d like. So, what can we do to protect ourselves? Now, this is certainly not legal advice, but what I have seen sitting through countless depositions is probably the most important factor is making sure we have done what is referred to as due diligence. That simply refers to taking an exercise of care that is reasonable. In all the incidents above, try to put yourself in the place of the administrator in charge and ask whether you would have done due diligence to try to prevent something like that from taking place.

For football coaches, is it clearly stated that participants of different ages should not practice or play against one another and has that information been passed along? Was the baseball coach trained about the importance of safety and appropriate drills for that particular age group? Could you, as an administrator, have done anything about a child who gets hurt in a freak accident, like the one who ran into the fence latch? Can you show that you not only background-check your coaches, but take additional screening steps to ensure no one with bad intent volunteers in your leagues—even if they don’t have a record?

And the incident that prompted me to write this article was about the coach who told the baserunner to slide. In the trial, the argument was about not only whether the coach had taught proper sliding technique, but also the game situation and whether with a score that seemed out of reach, should a coach even be sending a player from second to third base! The jury did find for the coach, although the verdict wasn’t unanimous. The coach was lucky he had liability coverage to be able to hire a capable attorney, but if he hadn’t, he would have been staring at a major financial headache.

The moral? It’s sports, and sometimes accidents happen, and there’s not always someone who is right or wrong. But in today’s world, you must not only do due diligence, but be able to prove it. And trust me, when an unfortunate incident happens, someone will be there to make sure everyone possible is blamed.

John Engh is executive director of the National Alliance for Youth Sports (NAYS) in West Palm Beach, Fla. He can be reached via email at jengh@nays.org. To join more than 3,000 communities by starting a NAYS Member Organization, visit www.nays.org, email nays@nays.org or call (800) 729-2057.