Youth soccer: Adult bad behavior not recent
In response to Laurence Reisman’s column April 28, “12-year-old soccer near Vero Beach: Relatives fight on field; kid cusses out ref”:
Over 30 years ago, my filming an Under 9 (year-old) game caught a parent coming onto the sector to spit within the referee’s face, his son injured running headlong into the goalie, whose team was up 6-0. (The Florida Youth Soccer Association eliminated the parent from viewing any game in any club ceaselessly.)
Sadly, at the identical time, one of the best youth soccer ref in Dade County was punished for not remembering to remove his Florida High School Athletics Association patch from his uniform when he must have been wearing his U.S. Soccer Federation patch for that game.
After 13 Disciplinary Committee hearings on our “one-team” club, we decided to eliminate them participating the subsequent yr’s affiliation, quite than proceed wasting 90% of our executive time on such nonsense!
Cutler Ridge Coach Peterson’s Under 8 program motto, “In the event you rejoiced you won,” kept no rating and used modified international rules of six per side, allowing everyone to play every minute of each game. They blew a whistle to be sure the kids could look up at planes flying overhead!
Meantime, a close-by club’s handled recently arrived folks not liking the leads to their 7-year-olds’ scrimmage!
Some things change, some not a lot!
My very own puzzlement today is how did we use volunteers and paid soccer stars as coaches and charge just $85 a season way back then? Today, we’re fortunate to fund $300-a-month “activity fees” for every of our grandsons so that they can learn to like all of the games kids must play growing up in America!
Jim Matthews, Tequesta, is former president of the Dade Youth Soccer Association/Cutler Ridge Soccer Club.
Trap-neuter-release policy reduces free-roaming cats
Whichever side of the argument in regards to the trap-neuter-release policy for cats chances are you’ll be on, the one thing we will all agree upon is the necessity to scale back the variety of free-roaming and feral cats in our county.
The present Indian River County and Health Department policies have only produced an increasing number of cats and have done nothing prior to now 16 years to scale back the issue.
I feel we can even all agree our current county leash law policy for outdoor cats borders is ridiculous and unenforceable, to say the least.
TNR could also be controversial to some, however it has proven time and again in small and huge cities throughout the country that it really works and reduces cat populations significantly. Whether you’re for or against the policy, would not or not it’s the logical idea to do something different quite than proceed past failing practices which have only made the issue worse and has resulted in additional cats?
Professionally run TNR programs result in fewer cats, and that is a win for everybody!
Ted S. Pankiewicz Sr., Sebastian, is executive director of For The Love of Paws.
Column about danger of cats carrying disease fearmongering
The Cambridge dictionary defines a fearmonger as “someone who intentionally tries to make people afraid of something when this is just not essential or reasonable.” This for my part describes Richard Baker’s column May 1, “Remove cats from streets; keep leash laws to maintain us protected from deadly diseases.”
He begins with the “terrible disease toxoplasmosis.” In keeping with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s contracted by eating undercooked, contaminated meat, unwashed produce and swallowing the parasite after contact with cat feces. The vast majority of people infected show no signs of infection.
The book he quotes actually checked out “statistically significant excess” of getting pet cats from birth to 13. Not feral.
He mentions 95 cat bites, but nowhere links it to rabies. There isn’t a connection.
“Opposition to humane control of community cats via TNR is commonly based on a misunderstanding of rabies biology,” says Julie Levy, DVM, PhD, on the University of Florida. “Some species, corresponding to dogs, can harbor a strain of rabies especially adapted to that animal. Cats have never developed their very own strain of rabies.”
Since 2006, 28 cases of human rabies have been diagnosed in the US. The Florida Department of Health, Bureau of Epidemiology shows no rabies in St. Lucie or Martin counties for 2021. Indian River had one case, a raccoon.
Baker picks tidbits from various sources to justify why he believes feral cats must be killed as a substitute of being handled in a humane manner. When those opposing TNR talk in regards to the “sad” plight of cats, it’s disingenuous.
In a perfect world, cats can be indoors with loving homes. But that is reality. Although he doesn’t say he’s advocating killing feral cats, that’s the choice. If feral cats ceased to exist, people would still develop toxoplasmosis or rabies from other sources, and other horrors he blames on feral cats would still exist.
Linda Greenwald, Port St. Lucie
Public speech needn’t be vile
Some months ago I went by the home of a recent person on the town.
A single dad raising his young son, they gave the look of a pleasant family. Recently, he put up a flagpole and a flag that reads: “(expletive deleted) Biden.” I see a number of of those flags across our city as I travel about. They do not shock me an excessive amount of anymore.
This flag was different, though. At the underside it also reads “and (expletive deleted) You in case you voted for him.”
Farther down the road there’s a resident with two flags, one an the other way up American flag (universal sign of distress), the opposite an “(expletive deleted) Biden” flag. To top it off, painted on the back of their pickup truck was “(expletive deleted) Ukraine.”
I’ve even seen a man driving around town with an “(expletive deleted) Trump” sign on his automobile.
Is it just me or is anyone else disgusted and offended by this sort of vile public free speech?
Welcome to the neighborhood …
Chuck Proulx, Port St. Lucie
