The football fields at Love-Hatbox complex have room for a second youth football league.
The city should see room is made for that second league this fall.
Last week, an organizer for Muskogee Youth Football and Cheer said that the city told him that the league could use the Hatbox fields. But the organizer, Dan Hall, complained that the league that plays there now, Paul Young Football League, won’t cooperate. Hall said the PYFL wouldn’t act on MYFC proposals for sharing the fields.
The Paul Young league was founded by city Councilman Robert Perkins decades ago, and Perkins and other volunteers have given many youths and disadvantaged youths an opportunity to play football and learn more about the game. The entire city can appreciate the job that they have done.
And naturally, there would have been some tension between the leagues. No one likes their turf to be intruded on, and up to this time, the Paul Young league was the only game in town.
From what’s been revealed, it also appears that another city councilman, Jackie Luckey, was overzealous in preventing the MYFC from being able to get its sharing proposals to Paul Young organizers.
That should not have happened. The fields are public fields. They don’t belong to the PYFL, any other person or league. MYFC should not have had to come to the newspaper with its complaints.
The city should have intervened and seen that PYFL accommodated MYFC at the fields. The two leagues should not be at odds, but working to accomplish the same purpose.
