JP Bowers
March 2, 2020 10:11
The facilities are nice and most of the staff are quite friendly, however I have to give them 1 star for the extremely poor experience my wife and I had as volunteer coaches. I am a long time fan and member of the Y and I grew up playing basketball at Dupont. I have volunteered before but this last experience was not only disappointing but very upsetting. I will try to make a very long story short. I volunteered to coach an U17 bball team who had no coach just days before the season was to begin. I was given a roster of 6 kids, one of them was 13 and was in the wrong age group. The first game I had a kid foul out and had to play with 4. I reached out to the sports director who did not respond. It turned out that that person stepped down or quit. The interim sports director informed me that I could add some kids to the roster and that due to all the issues with how poorly the league was organized those kids fees would be covered. All they would have to do would be to have their parents sign waivers. Those three kids did sign waivers and I handed them to the font desk myself. For some reason over the course of the season, the interim sports director, the executive director, and the 3rd and final sports director all kept asking me about these kids and why they weren't on the original roster. I explained them the answer, told them their names for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th times and assured them they had signed the waivers and I turned them in myself. These kids played all season long and as we enter into our semi-final playoff game my team is informed at the tip off that we will forfeit the game because we have 3 ineligible players that have not signed waivers. Not only is that untrue, here is the real Kicker, THEY STILL LET THEM PLAY THE GAME!!! They said you guys can go ahead and play but it wont count and you cant play in the championship game tomorrow! Can you believe that?! It is absolutely ridiculous how they handled the situation and down right idiotic. There were so many different ways they could have handled the situation and could have made it right. I practically begged the executive director to just at least call the other coach and see if he would even be willing to give us a rematch and he wasnt willing to do it. He also told me that this was "about the kids". The YMCA lost our waivers and not once through 5 different staff members, or 3 different sports directors did they communicate this. Not once did they ask me to have my players sign new waivers, if so I would have done it. It was quite easy in the first place! They were unwilling to admit their mistake and own up to the consequences and decided to make my guys suffer instead. "About the kids" they said. The executive director even told me "I'm probably making the wrong decision here." It was so bad that they offered my team a refund. I told them you are offering the wrong team a refund. Communicate your mistake to the other team, ask them for a rematch, and if they are unwilling then you give them a refund. But no. It's really sad. And you deserve to know. I would not put my kids in this YMCA sports program until they get things back on track. Very very sad.