Youth Leagues

When Lisa Licata brought her 5-year-old godson home from his first soccer game, his dad's question was classic: "Who won?" Puzzled, the child asked his mom. "He knows he kicked and he played," she told about 75 youth sports officials at a statewide conference yesterday in Columbia. The topic - how to protect young players from adults. "There's too much emphasis on winning, and no fun," said Licata, vice president of the Florida-based National Alliance for Youth Sports. From the manslaughter conviction last month of Thomas Junta, the 270- pound ice hockey dad who killed Michael Costin, his son's much smaller coach, to the enraged Crofton parents who followed, threatened and cursed at a teen-age referee, "sideline rage" is a major, growing problem in youth sports.

Maryland's Commission on Indian Affairs is turning up the heat on schools and athletic leagues that use Indian mascot names - even calling for an economic boycott of a baseball Little League that uses major-league nicknames. The commission - a quasi-independent board of the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, appointed by the governor - wants to boycott the 64 corporate sponsors of the Germantown Athletic Club baseball leagues. That includes companies as large as Giant Food and as small as the Germantown Copy Center and Montgomery Investigative Services.

WOULD BOBBY KNIGHT qualify to coach your kid's recreational basketball team? Perhaps not in Anne Arundel County, under an effort to closely scrutinize youth league coaches. The former Indiana University icon will undoubtedly land a coaching job at some sports-craved college willing to overlook his background -- as long as the guy delivers championship trophies. But what if Mr. Knight were to swear off big-time hoops? What if he decided that he couldn't tolerate another intellectually inferior college president or another imbecilic athletic director?

Bill Casagrande's secret is out, and high school football in Maryland might be the better for it. His idea is growing as fast as the kids are.Finally, middle schoolers are getting the chance to do something Casagrande couldn't do as a youth in the Parkville area.In 1995, Casagrande founded the Mid-Atlantic Unlimited Youth Football Association with one team -- a 35-player squad for junior-high-aged youths too big to make teams in weight-restricted leagues.They faced any private school freshman-sophomore team that would play them, and now, five years later, there is an eight-team league for more than 200 players (grades 6 through 8)

PHIL DEVITO never runs out of energy. The Savage resident is coordinating the local Guilford-Bollman Bridge Girl Scout cluster -- and she is soccer commissioner for the Savage Boys and Girls Club."

It's the height of tax season, the last weekend before April 15, and accountant Tim Dougherty should have been poring over forms and punching a calculator. But his son, Michael, was playing baseball this weekend against some of the best 11-year-olds in the country. So there Dougherty was yesterday, at a ball field in Jacksonville, keeping score instead of hunting for deductions in his Towson office. "I guess it's a matter of priorities, isn't it?" Dougherty said. The "Maryland Orioles 1999 Early Bird Tournament," which ends today, pits the youth league Maryland Orioles against five other teams from all over -- Connecticut, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Puerto Rico.

In a move that could help ease the shortage of recreational facilities in northwestern Baltimore County, a local developer said yesterday that ground would be broken this week for a 40,000-square-foot indoor sports arena in the Reisterstown area.The Owings Mills Sports Arena at 12400 Glynowings Drive is scheduled to open Jan. 23 for the second session of indoor winter soccer, developers say.The arena will feature two artificial-turf fields, a sports grill, a video arcade and an office for a sports medicine practitioner.

The Baltimore Police Department kicked off its spring soccer league yesterday afternoon at a municipal park that was once a haven for drug dealers.More than 500 children packed Frank C. Bocek Park, on East Madison Street at the edge of some of East Baltimore's most dangerous neighborhoods. Provident Bank of Maryland donated $25,000 to pay for referees and uniforms."I came to have fun," said Shatel Veazy, 10, a fifth-grader at Frederick Elementary School. "I have no experience with soccer, but I like to kick things."

On a sunny fall Wednesday, young girls kick soccer balls at Howard County Park in Glenwood as a flock of geese squawk overhead, flying south.Then out-of-season noises erupt. "Clink." "Throw it home!" "Four! Four!"Timmy Siders, 11, rounds third, legs pumping, arms flailing, barely beating the tag at home plate.These are the kids of October, still at home with this summer game amid the dying leaves of fall.Siders plays infield for the Western Howard Renegades, an under-12 fall baseball team.

IT STARTED in 1967 with one baseball field, 60 players and four teams. Today, Mount Airy Youth Athletic Association, celebrating its 30th anniversary, boasts four lighted fields, a concession stand, 550 players and 51 teams.Originally known as Mount Airy Little League, the organization changed its name in 1967. Several years later, it expanded to offer a football program for boys and cheerleading for girls.Baseball games are played on the original field -- the junior league field as it's known today -- at the Mount Airy firemen's activity grounds at Twin Arch Road and Route 27.Mount Airy Fire Company has been instrumental in the growth of MAYAA, according to Bob King, MAYAA president.