Sky View Youth Football league accuses software firm of
misplacing $45K
- By Javier Laboy staff reporter
- Jun 21, 2016
- (1)
The Sky View Youth Football league is scrambling to raise money after they claim that a third-party software firm is denying them access to some the league’s funds, which total $45,000.
Breanne Young, director of the youth football league, said the league had been using Jevin Sports Organization Management’s online registration services for three years, but that this year the company’s president told her only about a third of their $45,000 is available for use due to company errors.
In previous years, Jevin collected registration payments from players’ families on behalf of the league whenever they were due. Jevin would then distribute the funds to the league to cover expenses such as insurance costs and equipment purchases.
This year, players’ parents paid registration fees to Jevin as usual, but once the league needed to access that money, they were met with silence from the company, Young said.
“We continued to ask for our funds without any response,” Young said. “Our calls weren’t getting answered, our emails weren’t getting answered, nor our text messages.”
Since the start of May, requests for the use of these funds were ignored and parents were later notified that the money was not available, according to Young.
After weeks of unanswered calls, league officials say they managed to contact the president of the website, Dan Ptak. According to Young, Ptak said that only $14,000 of the sum total was available for use.
However, Ptak also reportedly stated that some of the Sky View Youth league’s funds had been mistakenly transferred to the Ogden Valley league. The latter reportedly waited two months for Jevin to return $7,000 of their registration fees, Young said. When Jevin finally did pay, Ogden Valley received $14,000. Ogden Valley sent the extra $7,000 to Sky View when asked, according to Young.
According to Young, this week marks the first of many in which equipment orders have to be made in preparation for the season.
“There’s several things that come up, and we have to have funds to pay those just to function,” Young said.
She also said that $30,000 is the approximate minimum for the league to be able to cover essential costs such as insurance and vital equipment like helmets.
“The 45 ($45,000) was to buy new jerseys, new pants, things like that; that was the extra,” Young said. “I mean, we could cut out a lot of extra things, but the kids paid for those to make it a fun season.”
However, despite the lack of funds, Young and the other parents have promised they would have the young athletes play in this coming season.
“We will do everything in our power to make sure our kids still have a season,” Young said. “To me, not having a season is not an option, so I won’t let that happen.”
While Jevin reportedly attributed the missing funds to error, Young said the league has filed a complaint against the company with the Smithfield Police Department.
Smithfield Police Det. Brandon Muir confirmed that police met with the leaders of the youth league Monday, and investigators will be looking into the allegations. Muir said it is an active investigation so he could not provide additional details, but he did say that so far, police have not been able to reach a representative of Jevin.
Jevin did not return phone calls from Herald Journal reporters by deadline on Tuesday.
Herald Journal crimes and court reporter Amy Macavinta contributed to this article.
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