The new president of American Youth Football's Jersey Shore Conference is telling parents and coaches to grow up.
This still from a videotape shows coaches of the Fords Bearcats team 10U team on the field after a player was ejected from a heated game on Sept. 16.
The incoming president of a Monmouth and Ocean County youth football conference that oversees thousands of players, hundreds of coaches and countless parents issued a stern warning that he will not tolerate the kind of name calling and harassment alleged to have occurred in separate on- and off-the-field incidents over the past three weeks.
"I have ZERO TOLERANCE for name calling that includes racial slurs, ethnic slurs, religious slurs and/or the use of profanity and behavior by those who are supposed to be adults and examples for the youth participants," wrote Dean Pinto, the new president of American Youth Football's Jersey Shore Conference, in an email to coaches and officials this week.
"The players are told they cannot do it on the field by the game officials, and thus the adults should be held 'extra accountable' by our league reps, presidents and your board members," wrote Pinto, a law enforcement official who had been the conference's first vice president. "If they are incapable, then the league will step in where practicable and take necessary action. While I certainly cannot parent every child, I can demand that every parent not act like a child!"
The former president, Lou Montanaro, who resigned Sunday, did not respond to requests for comment. But Pinto said the recent incidents had nothing to do with Montanaro's decision.
For example, Pinto told NJ Advance Media that Montanaro informed him of his resignation on Sept. 16, before the second alleged incident occurred. That incident stemmed from an unusually heated game between teams from Manalapan and Fords. After the game, Fords supporters complained that their counterparts from Manalapan used the N-word.
Father: Issue should've been 'handled as adults'
Regarding the first incident, Pinto said that despite controversy and media attention surrounding a profanity-laced voicemail message left by one of the league's former coaches, ex-New Jersey high school standout and NFL player Charlie Rogers, the incident did not contribute to Montanaro's decision to step down.
For instance, Pinto said, the hearing process went smoothly, and Montanaro's decision to suspend Rogers was not challenged.
What did contribute to Montanaro's decision to step down, Pinto said, was an increasingly demanding workload from holding two AYF positions simultaneously.
In addition to acting as the Jersey Shore president, Pinto said Montanaro had also been heading the AYF's entire Big East Region, a position he will retain.
"It just got to be be where the workload was too much," Pinto said, adding that running a youth sports program was "a thankless job," with parents that are increasingly vocal and coaches that are under ever-higher pressure to please them.
"For every thank you you get," he said. "You're going to get 150 complaints."
In the more recent incident, a game on Sept. 16 between rival teams of 10-year-olds from Manalapan and Fords, word spread social media that supporters of the mostly white Manalapan Braves had used the N-word against players on the mostly black Fords Bearcats.
The president of the local Fords American Youth Football association, Corrinne Smith, told NJ Advance Media that during the Sunday afternoon game at Fords' Pinter Field, she watched as two Bearcats players came off the field in tears.
Smith said she then heard one of the players tell his mom that the mother of a Braves player on the opposite side of the field had hollered a string of insults at him, disparaging his weight, his skin color and his character, though the woman did not use the N-word at that point.
"These kids ran off the field crying," Smith said of the two players.
It was later in the game, Smith said, that a Fords volunteer approached her to say he had heard the same Manalapan parent use the N-word in reference to the behavior of the Fords team while she spoke to another adult in a smoking area outside a gate leading to the field area.
Smith said she told the president of Manalapan's local association, Dan Grzejka, what had happened, and that Grzejka assured her he would look into it.
Grzejka told NJ Advance Media that said he himself had not heard the N-word used, and that he found nothing to substantiate the allegation when reviewing the game tape and interviews with several people who were present, including two black Manalapan coaches and the mother of one of Manalapan's two black players.
The woman was never positively identified and questioned about the allegation, however, and Pinto said no action was taken.
"Nobody every heard it," Pinto said.
On Friday, Smith said she considered the incident moot.
"We are just trying to move forward," she said.
In the earlier incident involving Rogers, the stepfather of an 11-year-old player from an East Brunswick team with an upcoming game against Matawan released a profanity-laced voice mail message left by Rogers on Aug. 25, promising to blitz the boy until he was forced out of the game.
The stepfather was a former official of the Matawan AYF association who had pulled the boy out of that program and placed him in East Brunswick's program.
NJ Advance Media obtained a copy of the voicemail allegedly left by Rogers, which can be heard below.
Rogers was fired from an assistant coaching job at St. John Vianny High School in Holmdel soon after the incident became public. Then, following a hearing earlier this month, Rogers received an indefinite suspension from American Youth Football coaching ordered by Montanaro.
Presiding over the Rogers matter was among Montanaro's final official duties as the Jersey Shore Conference president, which he led for 26 years.
Rogers later said he was angered by the stepfather, Chris Schuster, for failing to tell him, or Matawan AYF board members, he was pulling his son from the program because of a lack of playing time. And Rogers said he only left the message after Schuster had hung up on him amidst a heated phone conversation just before then, assertions Schuster denied.
In the Fords matter, tensions rose even before the start of the game, which ended with a 20-6 win by the 4-0 Bearcats, and dropped Manalapan to 2-2, according to Pinto and Grzejka. Things began simmering with a pregame controversy involving a physically-imposing Fords player whose eligibility was questioned by Manalapan officials, though he was eventually allowed to play.
During the game, following what Grzejka said was questionable officiating, a heated exchange broke out between the referees and Fords coaches who can be seen on a videotape of the game rushing onto the field following the ejection of one of their players.
Apart from the N-word accusation against Manalapan, charges of name-calling were also leveled at Fords, with the mother of a black player for Manalapan accusing opponents of taunting her son with a slur, according to Grzejka and the boy's mother, who asked that her son's identity not be revealed.
Referring to all of Sunday's alleged name-calling, Grzejka said he was, "saddened that any child would have to experience an experience like this."
NOTE: This story was updated to reflect comments by the president of the Fords American Youth Football association, Corrinne Smith.
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.