Parks Director Phil Rollins -The Bay Net photo

St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners held at least two unannounced, non-recorded meetings to decide what action to take on a proposal for the county to take over the youth football league.

Board members announced Tuesday a plan has been abandoned that would have had county begin administering a youth football league, which would have required all teams to register with the county or be excluded from play on public fields.

The proposal was launched in February by Parks Director Phil Rollins in response to an incident in November at a St. Mary’s Pigskin Football league game in Mechanicsville. At that game a new Lexington park team was ejected from the league after disputing unfair calls by officials on the field, and what has been vaguely described as a melee broke out and police were called in. Parents of the ousted team reportedly claimed favoritism and racial prejudice.

Last month, the Board adopted “National Standards in Youth Sports”, which require background checks and training for all coaches, as well as code of ethics declarations from parents.

On Tuesday, county officials stated they will take no action on the league takeover proposal, and will wait and see if the new “national standards” and other changes have any effect on the league.

Commissioners said they recently met with Pigskin league officials, in meetings with two commissioners at a time. While not illegal, meeting with two commissioners at a time is a gimmick used to exclude the public from being invited from the meetings, as they are not “official” meetings of the board.

When the method of discussions was revealed Tuesday, commissioners Larry Jarboe and Dan Raley immediately defended the method of semi-secret discussions.

“It wasn’t a closed meeting,” Raley said.

“The doors were open,” said Jarboe, who was in one of the meetings with Raley.

But no public notification was given, and only people passing those open doors would have known the meetings were occurring.

Starting the discussion, Rollins recapped the abandoned proposal. He said the county would administer the league, and individual clubs would be responsible for fund-raising, recruiting coaches, players and organizing teams.

“This is the model used in Charles and Calvert counties, and it seems to works well there,” Rollins said.

“I don’t think we need to go down that road,” Commission President Tommy McKay said if the takeover proposal, who had a meeting with Commissioner Tom Mattingly and Pigskin leaders.

McKay said Pigskin officials indicated they will be registering with “Pop Warner” a national youth football league. Also, County Administrator George Forrest stated he will be taking a seat on the Pigskin board of directors, representing the county.

“I got out of the meeting they are a good organization trying to do the right thing,” McKay said.