By Matt Stout and Sapna Pathak
Staff Writers

For years, Dave Tremblay had heard of the American Youth Football and Cheer organization. Created in Florida in 1996, it had spread across the country, drawing Pop Warner Little Scholars teams away from their leagues and building itself into an organization with 250,000 participants.

Yet, when talks of dropping Pop Warner for the upstart AYF reached New Hampshire, Tremblay, then the football coordinator for the Hooksett Hurricanes, was surprised.

Subsequent events, however, may be classified as even more surprising.

With the decision of 23 of the state’s 26 Pop Warner teams ­ including the Pelham/Windham Razorbacks, Salem Rams, Goffstown Screamin’ Eagles, Bedford Jaguars, Concord Capitols and Nor-Rock Vikings ­ to make the switch to AYF in June 2005, the balance of power within New Hampshire youth football forever changed.

What seemed like a transition made solely in the best interest of the state’s young athletes was fueled by rumors of financial changes and alleged personal agendas, and has since set off debates that transcend the gridiron and have reached federal courts.

Essentially, Pop Warner and AYF football leagues differ little in what they offer to their Granite State participants (see graph at right). Though Pop Warner’s age and weight classes are set by a national standard, they are very similar to those of the 23 AYF teams in New Hampshire, who have the flexibility to deviate from the national numbers.

Entering this year, both feature the option for “unlimited” weight classes, and each claims on Web sites to be the nation’s largest youth football and cheer organization. Pop Warner has 360,000 participants, but AYF has leagues in 44 states compared to Pop Warner’s 41.

There are differences. Pop Warner requires all participants to maintain a 2.0 grade-point average during the season; AYF, according to bylaws appearing on its Web site, only requires participants to be attending school.

“But it wasn’t really about a benefit of AYF or anything bad about Pop Warner,” said Tremblay, who recommended a move to AYF for the Hurricanes, though it was one of three programs to remain with Pop Warner. “It was the fact that the majority of the teams were going with AYF, and I didn’t see any reason not to go. I thought they pretty much offered the same things.”

The ramifications of the split, however, are still felt more than a year later.

The split

In the months leading up to the June 2005 vote that created the New Hampshire Youth Football and Spirit Conference (NHYFSC), divisions between the 26 teams of the state’s Pop Warner league were already forming.

Some volunteers, like Tremblay, were indifferent to a possible switch. Others, like officials from Hooksett, the Derry Demons and the Hampstead Wildcats, saw no reason to change.

Several others, however, became increasingly unhappy with the top-down structure of Pop Warner and were drawn to AYF’s approach, which allowed local leagues to set their own standards.

“[AYF] has age and weight limits that were pretty much the same as Pop Warner,” said Tammy Gagne, spirit coordinator of Goffstown’s AYF spirit squad, the Screamin’ Eagles. “But the biggest difference, to me, is you don’t have AYF breathing down your neck at the national level.”

Several league officials said rumors and an alleged press release that detailed financial changes exacerbated this feeling.

Jon Butler, the executive director of Pop Warner, said since the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in July 2002, non-profits like Pop Warner have come under greater financial scrutiny from the IRS, meaning “we get the auditors looking more closely over our shoulders so we have to look more closely over the regional finances, too.”

“There are a number of things that are not things that we create but are increasingly stringent requirements placed on all non-profits,” Butler said. “We don’t like dealing with them, either.”

Still, this greater financial control by the national level didn’t sit well with some in New Hampshire.

Right before the split, Tremblay said a press release was circulated to introduce what he called a Pop Warner “franchise fee.”

Tremblay said the alleged measure, which Butler says is not in effect, stated that any team using the Pop Warner logo on merchandise, clothing, etc., must pay a mandatory fee.

As of today, Butler said any team looking to use the trademarked Pop Warner logo need only seek approval from the national office and go through a “licensed Pop Warner vendor.”

Of the fee, Butler said “we never had that,” but the rumor played a role in the exodus from Pop Warner.

“Everybody took that and ran with it, like it was going to cost them a fortune,” Tremblay said. “That was the initial reason why everyone was jumping ship, as far as I know.”

Rick Pelletier, commissioner of NHYFSC and former president of New Hampshire Pop Warner, said he grew increasingly unhappy with the organization and felt Pop Warner was attempting to control where local leagues could buy Pop Warner products.

“In my opinion, it was Pop Warner’s lack of concern or lack of genuine interest in local leagues (that drove us away),” said Pelletier. “Their focus has become too money-oriented than what it should be.

“It takes money to operate, but you generate an income and it should filter back to the local level,” he continued, “and I have yet to see that with Pop Warner.”

Butler said some of these growing financial concerns were “misconceptions and miscommunication” he tried to resolve during a May 2005 meeting with New Hampshire officials. But “in hindsight,” Butler said, “the meeting, in many ways, should have taken place before that.”

“At the state level, they weren’t getting a lot of support from the national board, and the national level, I’m told, was getting too restrictive, too controlling,” said Jim Astarita, vice president of AYF’s Bedford Jaguars. “I think they (the programs that left Pop Warner) would have received exactly what they wanted if they stayed in Pop Warner, but they couldn’t trust them. That’s my perception. They couldn’t trust national.”

Gagne said several New Hampshire officials also grew uneasy with Pop Warner’s need to control regional cheerleading competitions, regardless of where they took place.

Al Perillo, director of Pop Warner’s New England region, said that wasn’t a break from tradition ­ regional meets have always been organized by a regional staff.

“My opinion is people left (Pop Warner) because they were misled up there (in New Hampshire),” said Perillo, in his 13th year as regional director. “The leadership up there, I think, wasn’t on-board. A lot of people didn’t even realize that their towns weren’t Pop Warner.

“They had a personal ax to grind and they didn’t like some of the ways Pop Warner was doing things,” he continued, “so they led them to what they told (the parents) was a better organization.”

Yet as much as some disliked the hierarchical organization of Pop Warner, those who remained ­ joining two new Granite State Pop Warner teams this year, the Capitol City Vipers of Concord and the Manchester Eagles ­ said it’s the structure that makes the 77-year-old organization strong.

In contrast, the major drawback of AYF, said Jason Patch, president of New Hampshire Pop Warner, is its flexibility. Teams create their own league models, which can sometimes vary drastically once those same programs reach the national tournament level.

“Pop Warner has a tradition of developing youth football players, it’s a structured program and it’s a democratic program,” said Mike Wagner, the Vipers’ president, who opted to sign his son up in Hooksett last season instead of with AYF’s Concord Capitols. “Other organizations may not address that same set of rules or stress that same guidance.”

AYF aftermath

Many New England states faced the same decision New Hampshire did in 2005, and few leagues chose the same route.

According to Perillo, the regional Pop Warner director, in eastern and central Massachusetts nearly every one of the combined 98 teams remained with Pop Warner. In Rhode Island, two-thirds of the leagues chose to stay, while two of the three leagues in Connecticut also voted to stick with tradition.

As a result, the three remaining New Hampshire Pop Warner teams ­ too few to officially create their own league ­ joined with teams in central Massachusetts.

As the 2005 season approached, Patch said he received calls from “a number of parents” who weren’t informed their leagues had switched from Pop Warner to AYF.

“I know for a fact that a lot of the programs didn’t notify their membership (until later on),” he said. “I wouldn’t say it was a majority, but it was some.”

Perillo said this was the situation in Concord, which “he’s very familiar with.” Even now, Wagner said he doesn’t “want to speak for any other organization except for those in our past experiences,” but Concord’s new Pop Warner organization doesn’t “run a dictator-type program.”

Wayne Levesque, president of the Concord Capitols when the team made the switch to AYF, was not available for comment.

“When there’s poor communication or someone making decisions for the whole organization, it puts those people at the will of the decision maker,” Wagner said. “People are almost held captive.”

Astarita claimed, however, that of the Hooksett parents he spoke to, not all were happy with the decision to remain with Pop Warner.

“I don’t want to speak for them, and I’m not sure if that’s something they want to hear,” he said, “but all I know is there are families who are not happy traveling to Massachusetts.”

Patch said he’s heard “no complaints whatsoever,” adding that trips to away games rarely exceed an hour and are sometimes shorter than the drives parents made to former Pop Warner programs in Plymouth, Keene or Peterborough.

In the months following the divide, the rift was broadened when both boards began a battle over more than $60,000. The matter still remains in the hands of the federal and state courts (See sidebar on Page B-1).

The (Granite) state of football

Despite the bad blood and, as Perillo put it, “bits of animosity” that surround the state’s two youth football leagues, both kicked off the 2006 youth football season on Sunday, Aug. 27, with eyes toward the future.

AYF teams welcomed three new programs into the fold this year ­ the Milford Mustangs, North Country Wolf Pack and the John Stark Generals ­ and have found little reason to regret leaving Pop Warner.

“There has not been one drawback at all,” Astarita said, adding that all the weight classes from the previous year have remained the same except for the oldest Midget division, whose weight limit jumped from 150 to 160 pounds. “I remember a couple years ago thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be different, the leagues are all going to change.’ But it hasn’t really changed anything locally.”

The NHYFSC state board, whose members mostly made up the Pop Warner board prior to the split, has made that continuity possible, using the flexibility AYF granted them to, as Salem Rams Vice President Pete Santarelli described it, retain much of the “same look and feel” of the old Pop Warner league.

On the other hand, the current Pop Warner teams, nearly left for dead a year ago, are starting to regain their footing.

On Aug. 19 and 20, Hooksett hosted the Ricky McGregor “Hurricane Kickoff Classic,” which for the second straight year stood as the world’s largest Pop Warner jamboree. This year, Patch said Donati Field welcomed 95 teams from around Massachusetts, 21 more than in 2005.

In addition to the Vipers, whom Wagner said has 60 players, and Eagles, which Patch said fields 90 to 100 athletes, Pop Warner plans to add more teams. Though Patch wouldn’t confirm the towns, Wagner said there are a number of towns northwest of Concord, including ones near Hanover and in eastern Vermont, that have expressed interest.

“I think, when we were initially talking, as many as five teams were interested in joining,” Wagner said. “So there’s still talk of them joining next year.”

The national Pop Warner board also instituted an “unlimited” weight class this season, an option Patch said the New Hampshire teams may explore next year and one that’s very similar to the “senior football” league many towns, including Goffstown, have established alongside their AYF program.

Patch also said he and the board are in talks of regaining sponsors for New Hampshire, though he wouldn’t comment further until discussions are finalized in the coming weeks.

Yet, with roughly 800 participants to AYF’s 4,000-plus in New Hampshire, Pop Warner may never quite reach the prominence it once held in the state.

“If you look at how many teams are in AYF in New Hampshire and you compare it to how many teams are Pop Warner, there are tons of teams that are in AYF because there are middle school leagues, and fourth- and fifth-grade leagues,” said Tremblay, who currently coaches the Pembroke Junior Spartans of the AYF affiliate Granite State Football League for middle school teams. “I would have to say it definitely seems like the ship is going toward AYF.”