Wednesday, January 13, 2010

SFSFL in various trouble.

A couple sources have told me the SFSFL is not doing very well at the moment. Last year it lost a number of teams due to fee hikes. This year they seem to pay 150% more then a local youth league in the interest of fair opportunity to other groups and organizations.

For the last few years it seems the City of San Francisco has been making it hard on the league as they raise the costs to play on the fields. The sad part is they do very little to maintain the fields as players and referees get injured.

Their Premier division, CPSA, was playing at Boxer Stadium until a few years back when they moved to Kezar stadium. Unfortunately that was short lived and they moved to the neighboring Daly City to play at Jefferson high school to keep up with costs.

SFSFL of course contributes to their own problems by the collections of fees. You can view the latest checks and balances here. It really hard to run a league when teams can't or won't pay their fees.

The combination of the two may destroy the league that has been around longer then the Bay to Breakers. This will not only hurt the players, but it will also hurt plenty of referees who are trying to move up the ranks. This is the middle ground from youth to professional (CPSA is considered by USSF as a semi-professional league). If that bridge is burned then there is only one Amateur league that will take the referees, but will make it hard to move up due to the number of referees vs. number of games. If the ones who got thinned out already due to the USSF changes but has been contemplating on making a comeback would be more discouraged.

I know it's after Christmas but the quote fits, "Only a Miracle can save them now."

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