After a summer in which a travel baseball pitcher was allegedly ordered by his father to throw at the opposing team’s dugout in what was a very troubling incident, we shouldn’t be shocked in the least about what happened at a Pennsylvania youth football game.
During Saturday’s game in western Pennsylvania, youth coach Dequay Canton of the Carlynton Little Cougars was seen enraged and fighting coaches from Keystone Oaks. In a statement, Canton claimed he was being portrayed by the national media to be the aggressor, but he says racism is what fueled his actions.
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Without providing evidence, Canton claimed “our black and brown kids continued to be called an ‘N,’ and every quarter our kids were called the ‘N’ word, and we addressed it with the referees, but there was no response.”
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He continued, “It’s a shame that in 2026, 8-9-year-old kids are calling young black and brown kids the ‘N.’ It’s even more shameful that their parents, coaches and referees let them do it without correcting them. They would rather fight me for addressing it than correct their kids. That should be the story. Period.”
The Carlynton youth football team followed up Canton’s statement by announcing that the man who recorded the incident, Ryan Crux, has been banned from team football events. Crux’s son plays for the Carlynton team. Crux admitted to Pittsburgh media Tuesday night that there was bad blood brewing between him and the coaching staff. It turns out, this video probably helped facilitate a ban.
“My son has been getting screamed at things like ‘go get that f–kin ball!’ since he was 6 years old. I don’t speak to my son like that and I don’t want anyone else speaking to him like that,” Crux wrote on Facebook this week. “Now hes 9 years old talking like hes 15 and I blame it all on youth football coaches. I don’t want to hear him speak like that but hes been hearing it from these wack ass coaches for 3 years straight so what f–kin difference does it make now?”
By now, none of this should be shocking. It’s business as usual in a world where mom and dad are blowing $260 a weekend to attend travel basketball tournaments. It’s a world where 11U pitchers are allegedly told to throw a fastball at his opponent’s dugout –– and then the boy obeyed the alleged orders.
It’s a world where a Mississippi sheriff lost his job this summer for fighting an umpire after a 14U travel baseball game. It’s also a world where a parent is willing to come out on the field to trip a kid who’s running towards the end zone.
It’s also a world where, just this week in Ohio, 11 members of a top Cleveland high school football team were charged with theft after ripping off $4,500 in merchandise from a Columbus Dick’s while in town for a football game. Two of those charged with the thefts are adults, including one who had committed to a scholarship from D-1 Kent State.
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Who’s to blame? All of us. Americans have actively destroyed community youth sports for so long that there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle at this point. We’ve created life-or-death 8-9U football leagues with parents who are ready to battle the second they leave their SUVs.
We’ve put people like Dequay Canton in charge of our kids and let him run wild.
Do Americans have the spine to do better? Apparently not. These incidents keep happening and show no sign of slowing down.
