Dear editor: Richmond Hill cares about its youth while funding and supporting our children to participate and sometimes excel on our sports fields.
Most towns that have winning sports programs annually will start their youth before they are even 3 feet high. It gives a community a chance to come together in good wholesome play and exercise. It also teaches the importance of team work. From these neophytes come a few outstanding athletes that go on to excel, and Richmond Hill has its share.
Year after year, chicken hawks – or scouts from private schools – perch themselves in an attack mode in our bleachers and swoop down and offer our best athletes a scholarship to their private school that is a state champion year after year. I know of two private schools with outstanding football players that were recruited from the Hill.
These elite private schools have no “no students left behind” programs because they enroll only problem-free students. They sit in living rooms over Richmond Hill and tell parents, “Your son can be associated with the elite that are all going to college, and we can prepare them better in our classrooms.”
This is America and this is legal, and it is illegal to shoot chicken hawks. But there are other ways to level the playing field. Richmond Hill plays in an AAAA classification based on the number of student enrollment. Our private school state champions are classified as A, even though they can recruit from a billion students all over the world and remain an A. Based on their unlimited enrollment requirements, I think they should have to play in a higher classification.
I do admire the players that have remained loyal to their hometown and have said, “No, I want to play with my friends.”
I vote for a chicken hawk season.

Jack Rodgers
Richmond Hill