Street justice on the gridiron

The playoff-bound South County Raptors, a football team made up of 12- to 14-year-old boys, was supposed to play in the first round of the Fairfax County playoffs on Saturday.

Instead, the team’s two coaches were fired by the commissioner. The boys stayed home, forced to forfeit the game and any hope of a championship trophy.

A just punishment for a team accused of throwing a wild sex party on a boat in the middle of a lake indeed.

But that distinction is owned by the Minnesota Vikings – not South County.

No. The Raptors’ are guilty of a far worse crime.

The Raptors’ coaches, it seems, moved the commissioner’s son to offense from defense in a hard fought overtime win that gave the Raptors’ a spot in the playoffs.

“(My son) Scott does not sit out on defense – ever,” warned Dan Hinkle, the league’s commissioner, in an e-mail sent to head coach James Owens before the start of the season and obtained by The Washington Post.

“He goes in and stays in. That includes all practices, scrimmages and games. This entire league exists so he can play defense on the best team in his weight class. …He is my son, I own the league, and he plays every snap on defense.”

The kids are crushed. Their parents upset. Meetings have been held. E-mails have flown all week as the parents tried to get Hinkle to reconsider, the Post wrote. Hinkle would not talk publicly.

“Every time I think about this, I get sick to my stomach,” Owens said. “These kids worked hard to get this far. These kids were unbelievably excited about making the playoffs.”

The kindhearted commissioner offered to find the Raptors new coaches. The team, to its credit, would play only for head coach Owens.

When the coaches received Hinkle’s e-mail in August, the three talked and thought things were made clear to the commissioner. The coaches believed that they alone would decide where his son played.

“There was a phone call with Hinkle after that initial e-mail, and I thought we had an understanding on how we were going to coach the kids,” fired assistant coach Bill Burnham told the Post.

“The season went great. We had great kids, a really, really good bunch of kids who became good friends at school, ate lunch together at school. Really, it was everything you wanted to see out of a team experience.”

The head coach said he moved Hinkle’s son to offensive guard because the team had a better chance of winning.

The day after the game, Hinkle called Owens and asking about the offense-defense switch.

Head coach Owens: “I said, ‘Your son played offense. He played well and we won the game and we’re going to the playoffs.’ He said, ‘You’re fired.'”

The league chairman, Mark Meana, said the coaches did not violate any league rules and the league would not get involved. They would, however, investigate the affair.