Youth Football Coach in Wheelchair to Appeal Sideline Decision

When Merrill Staton showed up this week for his volunteer gig as the assistant coach and statistician for his son's second-grade flag football team, he learned that the private, nonprofit Football and Cheerleading Club of Johnson County (Kan.) had placed a condition on his work: He could remain a coach provided he let an adult follow his every move during games. According to The Kansas City Star, this stipulation satisfied the league's football board, which feared a player or 36-year-old Staton himself could be injured if momentum carried a player off the field and into the wheelchair.

"We felt like this was a reasonable approach," Rich Hunter, the club's executive director, told reporter Dawn Bormann. But Staton - who was not included in the original discussion and who did not have the opportunity to provide the board with insight into his condition or the mobility of his heavy-duty wheelchair - does not. So on Monday, he will appeal to the club's football board, even though several people have warned against it. They claim board members don't want Staton coaching at all, The Star reports, and they don't appreciate the public attention he is creating.

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