The youth soccer director who called police on the parents of Nevada, the 3 year old whose highlight reel got him pushed out of a Winter Park, Florida, league, told a 911 dispatcher it was “not really an emergency” before asking officers to rush to the park and remove the boy’s mother.
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The audio, obtained from the Winter Park Police Department, captures Thomas Hayes, a director with the i9 Sports league, on the phone the morning of Saturday, October 24, from Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Hayes opens by explaining he meant to dial the department’s local number and hung up when he realized he had called 911. Then he lays out his complaint.
“I just have an unruly parent here calling me on Instagram or whatever she’s doing, trying to make me look bad,” he told the dispatcher. He described the mother as “really, really disruptive, following me around and calling me names in front of this whole bunch of people,” adding, “So I want her to be gone. I am the director that’s here.”
When the dispatcher asked for a description, Hayes said the woman was Black and wearing pink. Then the youth soccer director pressed for speed. “Can you have someone quickly get here? They’re about to leave within ten minutes, so this needs to be like a rush,” he said. “I just want her off the property immediately, please.”
The family did leave, on their own. According to Winter Park police, the parents told officers the game was over and they were already heading out. The department called the situation a civil matter, said the family was cooperative, and confirmed nobody was arrested, trespassed, or forced off the property, adding that officers’ body cameras confirm that account. The league asked the family to go and said it would refund their fee at a later date.
The call paints a very different picture from the one Nevada’s mother gave after the video went viral. In her telling, the trouble started with other parents. She said parents had been going to the director complaining that their own kids were not getting enough playing time, with some saying that if their child could not play, they would just go home. When she walked up on that conversation, she said, the director told her everybody is paying money, so everybody should play. She said the league was looking for a reason to keep her son off the field, and the moment she spoke up for Nevada, they called the police.
In her account, the other parents were the ones threatening to leave because of her son. In the director’s call, the family he needed gone in a rush was hers.
The police event report includes pieces of both versions. It says the director “advised of unruly parents who were upset with their son’s playing time,” and that the parents had been told their child would no longer be allowed to play in the league “due to behavior.” The same report says the parents were upset that their child “was being scorned for playing too well and was being taken out of the game.”
Nevada had been playing in a league built for 5 year olds. The video posted by his family shows him weaving through the other kids and scoring goal after goal, followed by footage of his mother talking with officers. “They called the police on a 3 year old because he’s too good,” his father, Don, says in the clip. His mother has since said Nevada was left traumatized by what happened at the field.
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