Is this typical?

[HITTER23]

GET HIM !!!!!!!

 

[daboss]

This guy needs shut down. The parents, individually and/or as a group,could have a case for small claims court. That really needs to be addressed by somebody with a fluid legal background. The one course of action I believe could and should happen is to contact the State Director of the different sanctions and see if they would be willing to contact the coach to let him know they will refuse to sanction the team for the upcoming season. I'm not sure this has ever been done but it should. It is in the best interest of the families involved and to any tourney directors. No shows, no pay, or drama coaches are of no benefit to anyone in the travelball world.

Just my opinion.

 

[Stedman00]

Ok, no reason not to post what this asshole did all over the internet! Here it is. It is the Starz organization out of Mineral City. Mike Johnson is the president. His daughter Hayden is away at school and too busy to be the coach. We started with 9. A girl and her dad the assist left because it was too far and their little boy got sick. I am guessing they knew this was a shit show and left. That gave us 8. Not too hard to find 3 girls. Well, he didn't need 3 girls he needed a coach. Last year he had a man named Jason Leasure be the assistant. Not sure what happened but from what I hear he doesn't know what he is doing and it was a shit show and was asked to leave, He left and took some girls and started his own team. Mike told me he was an idiot and the girls he picked were not very good and he never would have picked them. Well since Mike is too busy to coach or look for someone else he went back and asked Jason to basically change the name of his team to the Starz. The location of the practices changed the girls changed and the coach changed. There were people from our team that lived 5 minutes from the field and now had to drive 40 minutes. There also were people that lived 35 minutes from the field and now had to drive an hour. Instead of coming to us and saying look, I have 2 options. I can get this other team to be the Starz and give you guys that live far or don't want to be on the team your money back or I need someone to help me find a coach and some more girls. I told him to have an open practice and post it on FB or here but he wouldn't. Looking back he probably didn't because he was afraid someone would say that organization is SHADY stay away. He stopped using the group text so people didn't know what was going on. We were told we would be hosting a tournament on the 16th back in August. Several people messaged hey are we playing this weekend? Do we have a schedule? No response. He called me and told me what was going on. I told him my concerns. Why would you rehire someone you fired! Not smart. Do you think a young girl is going to come back in 7 months and take over after someone else has been running it and he is going to be fine with that? He also lied to me and said that they had 12 girls. He went and watched them and was only taking 8. Not true he took all 10. I believe they have paid money as well not sure. But I do know they think they are all on the team. He told me he was taking only 3 of the 8 from our team. Never approached these people he didn't want and say look this is what is happening I will give you your money back and let you know if I hear of a team looking. He simply just avoided them after he took their money and they signed a contract. One girl found out from me what was going on for real and tried to get their money back. He said nope no money for you. He also said with pride he took care of them that they were off the team. There is another girl who came to practice and the tournament and he told me he didn't want her on the team. She only played one game this weekend and was one of the only girls to get a hit. I told her mom that he is trying to get her off the team but I don't think she is hearing what I am saying. There was one girl who was older and he forced the other coach to take her and those parents were upset. He thought that I was going to be ok with him basically stealing money from people and just smiling and nodding and waiting for him to weed out the girls he doesn't want. One of the girls who he does want who played every inning all weekend didn't pay. I guess the mom doesn't have the money but he doesn't care because he got money from these other people that he kicked off. The one parent told me that the first practice we had at the new location he just dropped his daughter off there. There was a new coach and 8 new girls had no clue what was going on. I would have thought I had the wrong spot. No one introduced themselves or explained what was going on. He of course told us at 4:00 practice at 6, 40 minutes from where we normally practice! No one but her came and then he is mad no one is showing up to practice. SMH I picked the team because of the location the number of girls the number of pitchers the amount of money to play. I wanted my daughter to play. She will not get better sitting on the pine. It seems to me that he has no problem taking money from 25 girls and making their lives hell till they leave and then he keeps the money. It's not that much money just give people even half back to save your name. Last night he called left a message saying"Jeff from velocity Heat reached out to me and asked if your daughter could be on his team. I said he could have her. Good luck to you guys." Well, I know Jeff and asked him WTF and he said he has never even talked to Mike Johnson before. The worst part is my daughter heard the message and was all excited thinking she was going to be on that team with her old teammates. I texted Mike what are you talking about? Jeff says he has never talked to you before. How much of my money do I get back and he of course has not responded.

Very bad situation. Find new team.

P.S. Please use some paragraphs and spacing in future long messages. above is brutal to read.

 

[DanMaz]

This guy needs shut down. The parents, individually and/or as a group,could have a case for small claims court. That really needs to be addressed by somebody with a fluid legal background. The one course of action I believe could and should happen is to contact the State Director of the different sanctions and see if they would be willing to contact the coach to let him know they will refuse to sanction the team for the upcoming season. I'm not sure this has ever been done but it should. It is in the best interest of the families involved and to any tourney directors. No shows, no pay, or drama coaches are of no benefit to anyone in the travelball world.

Just my opinion.

there are 2 sides of every story... just saying. i have no cat in this fight but maybe the coach has a different point of view so before everyone wants to sue and hang the guy from the home run fence... maybe he needs to speak and give his take on the situation... then send the dogs out if needed!

 

[DanMaz]

Very bad situation. Find new team.

P.S. Please use some paragraphs and spacing in future long messages. above is brutal to read.

i stopped 3/4 of the way thru --- wow it was brutal to read. Make your point! don't need to write a book or thesis on the subject

 

[SOFTBALLISFUN]

there are 2 sides of every story... just saying. i have no cat in this fight but maybe the coach has a different point of view so before everyone wants to sue and hang the guy from the home run fence... maybe he needs to speak and give his take on the situation... then send the dogs out if needed!

I wrote a book of exactly everything that happened. You don't have to read it. If he comes back with an excuse everything is already there in black and white.

 

[SOFTBALLISFUN]

Very bad situation. Find new team.

P.S. Please use some paragraphs and spacing in future long messages. above is brutal to read.

FYI the site doesn't let you indent for paragraphs. If you do it removes them. I went back and put entire lines in instead.

 

[Stedman00]

FYI the site doesn't let you indent for paragraphs. If you do it removes them. I went back and put entire lines in instead.

looks and reads much better now. thank you.

 

[IRdad09]

Now that the grammar police are happy. Seriously though. In no circumstance is this situation ok. Lets say for fun the number of people that have given money is even a little inflated (I'm not suggesting that it is) this is way out of line. There is NO scenario where this could even be looked at as remotely positive for any of the girls. Unfortunately, it sounds like you will most likely just have to cut your losses and run. This is the time of year where there is ton of movement and teams will be looking for players. Tell you DD to keep her head up and keep working. She will find a home.

 

[SOFTBALLISFUN]

Now that the grammar police are happy. Seriously though. In no circumstance is this situation ok. Lets say for fun the number of people that have given money is even a little inflated (I'm not suggesting that it is) this is way out of line. There is NO scenario where this could even be looked at as remotely positive for any of the girls. Unfortunately, it sounds like you will most likely just have to cut your losses and run. This is the time of year where there is ton of movement and teams will be looking for players. Tell you DD to keep her head up and keep working. She will find a home.

Thank you! I didn't know we would be graded. Just to clarify he did not take 20 girls' money I was just saying what is stopping him from doing that? Right now there are 3 of us that paid and are off the team with no money returned. I foresee a couple more being added to that total.

 

[jpkeating]

Wow I got a headache just trying to keep up with everything that happened with that team.
I hope everything works out for you and your daughter.

 

[SOFTBALLISFUN]

Me too LOL. Have definitely lost sleep about this. I love softball. I love the game I love seeing the girls improve. If you had told this would be our first experience with travel I would have thought you were nuts! I can't imagine a worse outcome! .

 

[SbSpirit]

DO WE LIKE SHITTY COACHES ?????????????? NOOOOOOO, NAME THEM !!! NAME THEMMMMM...... OHHHHHH, OHHHHHHHHHHH GET ME THE PHONE, BRING ME THE %$#^&*@ PHONE...

LOL

 

[SOFTBALLISFUN]

Just wanted to give you all an update. The team he recruited left and went back on their own. The original Starz team completely collapsed. My daughter and another girl we keep in touch with were able to find a team but there is a Catcher/1st still looking in the Canton area. NO ONE WAS GIVEN ANY MONEY BACK!

 

[Stedman00]

so, this person stole money from approx 12 people and basically walked away???

 

[SOFTBALLISFUN]

Yes, but we only had 8 so...