Little League player benched for taking a stand

Newquist

From Correspondent Lisa Price

LEMONT, Illinois (CNN) -- Krystle Newquist is a 14-year-old bench-warmer on her Little League softball team, but not because she's not good enough to play.

Krystle has been riding the pine for nearly the entire season because she taped over the name of her team's sponsor on her uniform shirt.

The sponsor is a bar called the Carousel Lounge. Krystle refuses to wear the shirt, in part because her grandfather died of cirrhosis, a degenerative disease of the liver often associated with alcohol.

The controversial jersey

"I don't see the difference between advertising a bar and advertising Miller Lite or something like that," Krystle says. "It is school grounds. We can't wear alcohol-related shirts. Why should we have to wear bar-related shirts?"

But the Lemont Little League Association in suburban Chicago says if Krystle wants to play, she must wear an unadulterated uniform.

"Well," says Kathy McGuire of the association, "she had the back of her shirt duct-taped, and our rules say she wouldn't be in uniform because the sponsor's name would be covered and all the uniforms are supposed to look the same."

When Krystle asked league officials if she could play for another team with a different sponsor, they told her it was too late. The season had already started.

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League didn't request waiver

Even when Krystle and her family offered to buy new jerseys for the entire team, the league said no.

"I was more than willing to pay out of my graduation money," Krystle says, "and my parents were willing to pay."

The manager of the Carousel Lounge said the bar paid the $250 sponsorship fee in order to do its part for the community, not knowing it would cause a controversy.

Little League Baseball International in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, said the Lemont organization could have requested the uniform rules be waived. But Lemont Little League officials chose not to do so.

The Carousel Lounge is the sponsor of a Little League softball team

In a letter released to the media, Lemont League President Michael Lippner wrote: "The allowing of the Newquist family to alter the uniform shirt would set a precedent for other families and players to refuse to wear the shirt and defeat the purpose of the game uniform shirt."

Even though she can't play, Krystle continues to cheer her teammates from the sidelines. She says all she wanted to do was play summer softball -- but she's wound up, instead, in the middle of a heated game of hardball.

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