Reisterstown football teams get money to play, thanks partly to Lewis
The Reisterstown Mustangs have surpassed their $6,000 fundraising goal, with some help from Ray Lewis. A donation from the former Raven will help send 140 youth football players to an out-of-state tournament after a Carroll County league banned them from the playoffs.
Lewis’ donation of $1,000, plus others Sunday, helped bring them over the top.
Marquita M. Melvin, the Mustangs president who started the GoFundMe drive to pay for the travel, said her son “lost his whole mind” whenhe saw the donation from Lewis. Another parent took a screenshot of the donation and shared it on Facebook. Even though Lewis retired before most of them began watching football, the Mustangs “still know exactly who he is,” said Melvin. “He’s a huge figure to these kids.”
Melvin said she was touched by Lewis’ donation. “It just means a lot when someone is willing to stand up for these kids and not worry about potential backlash.”
There may be yet more money left to raise, however. Melvin said the Mustangs were just invited to play in the ProFootball Hall of Fame World Youth Championship in Ohio.
“I clearly saw none of this coming,” Melvin said Sunday night. “I’m happy to see that people really do care. … Love is triumphing over hate. Thegood people are outnumbering the people who are not so good.”
$50 came from Laura Peters of Manchester, whose 11-year-old stepson plays for the North Carroll Titans, an opposing team in the Carroll County league. “In our age group, they were the best team,” she said. “It seems like the boys should get a chance to play.”
The teams were invited to participate in tournaments in Delaware, Georgia and Ohio after the Carroll County Youth Football and Cheer League voted to exclude the Reisterstown players from all postseason games, despite the fact that six of the Baltimore County teams qualified. Many say they believe racism was a factor — the six Mustangs teams are majority black while the other 10 organizations in the Carroll County league are majority white.
Efforts to reach officials from the Carroll league were unsuccessful. The league provides no contact information on its website and its Facebook page appears to have been deleted.
Representatives for USA Football, the sport’s national governing body, also did not respond to a request for comment.
The Carroll league has previously issued a statement that said the Reisterstown teams were being banned for “behavioral concerns,” although no details on specific incidents were offered. It said the league “elected not to risk the safety of the participants and in an attempt to promote a safe conclusion to the season, the league’s programs voted to remove the Reisterstown program at the end of the regular season andpriortotheplayoffs.”
Peters, the Manchester donor, said that in the onegametheMustangsplayedagainsther stepson’s team, she “saw absolutely nothing” that would indicate bad behavior.
Melvin said the outreach the Reisterstown teams have received boosted the children’s spirits. Besides the donations, she said Morgan State University invited the players — whoare ages 5 to13 — to attend their Saturday game against Delaware State University and the youth football program’s Facebook followers have grown from about 400 to nearly 1,000.
“It had us awestruck,” Melvin said. “We’re trying to make sure these kids have a happy ending for this season.”