It was a hard week for youth football due to the tragedy in Las Vegas. The National Youth Sports football league had several coaches at the Route 91 Harvest Festival and one passed away.
This is the same league that youth football players from Pahrump play in.
League President for Pahrump National Youth Sports football Johnny O’Neal couldn’t do a review of the week’s games because of the loss of life.
“It was a rough week for us,” he said. “We lost all three games, which was heartbreaking. But we lost way more than that on Sunday. Then Monday rocked the boat to tipping with the stressful school lockdowns. Not knowing if we had another Columbine with our student-athletes and teachers was extremely hard for me to handle while at work. (my wife works at Manse, one of my sons goes to Manse and one to RCMS)”
O’Neal then talked about the tragedy that struck the NYS League and the death of NYS coach, Charleston Hartfield, who was a member of the Nevada National Guard and an off-duty Metro Police officer when he was killed at the Route 91 Harvest Festival concert.
“We are deeply saddened by the death of an NYS coach, Charleston Hartfield, he was an off-duty policeman and was among the 58 concert-goers killed in Sunday night’s mass shooting,” O’Neal said.
“Another coach, Rodney Hosack, was critically injured. Multiple NYS Nevada staff were also at the concert on Sunday. Though they were thankfully uninjured, they have been deeply impacted by first-hand experiences during the deadly incident.”
There will be home games this Saturday at the high school and O’Neal said they will donate the all the proceeds from the concession stands to the family of Coach Hartfield.
The NYS football games are all on Saturday and the first one is the 9U team at 10 a.m. The last game is the 11U game, which starts at 3:15 p.m.
Contact sports editor Vern Hee at vhee@pvtimes.com