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JAMESTOWN – A Jamestown baseball team has rolled out a new attendance policy barring youth under the age of 18 from their home games without adult supervision.
The new rules follow a slew of disturbances involving youth at various Jamestown Tarp Skunk Games at Russell E. Diethrick, Jr. Park.
The team’s management announced the new attendance policy in a statement on social media Sunday.
One Jamestown lawmaker tells us this has been an ongoing issue with unattended youth.
“We’ve been to probably a dozen of the home games this year, and at the beginning it was cool and we were always comfortable there but the most recent few home games, we just had a couple uncomfortable situations,” said Ward Six Jamestown City Councilman Andrew Faulkner.
“The one that sticks out in my mind the most, a couple weeks ago at the free game there was just a large group of young kids running around and yelling and they ended up sitting next to us in the stands,” continued Faulkner. “There weren’t a whole lot of people there and it made us pretty uncomfortable. My girlfriend was really uncomfortable and she thought that maybe they were trying to steal her purse because they kept getting closer and closer, and being kind of weird. We ended up leaving in the 7th or 8th inning because it was pretty uncomfortable.”
This new guideline has amassed a mixed response from the public, some believing all children shouldn’t be held accountable for the misdeeds of others, while many are praising the Tarp Skunks, happy that this policy will help make the games more enjoyable for spectators.
“I think maybe the 18 threshold is a little high,” said Faulkner. “I’m on board with doing something to make it comfortable for everybody. I’ve seen a couple people reach out and it’s good because people were treating the stadium like a daycare, they were dropping their kids off and kids were unattended.”
“I have seen some of that but on the flip side I’ve had a couple people reach out to me saying ‘this sucks because my kid is 17, he’s not 18 yet. He can drive himself, he’s respectable, he goes to all the home games and spends his money at the stadium, they buy food and pay the entry and now he can’t go anymore,” furthered Faulkner.
WNY News Now reached out to the Tarp Skunks Team for more clarification of the rules, and as of our broadcast, we are still waiting on a response to our inquiry.
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