Oregon softball coaches suspended after confronting 11-year-old player on field

Two softball coaches were suspended after an on-field altercation during a game this month in Newberg when they rushed onto the field and harangued an 11-year-old player, according to the North American Fastpitch Association.

Video of the May 11 confrontation made headlines and news broadcasts, landing the player and her mother on “Good Morning America” last week.

The trouble started when Astoria Future Fish player Brinley Stephens hit a ball at the bottom of the first inning that struck a St. Helens Hornets player, said Benjie Hedgecock, the Fastpitch Association’s executive director.

The St. Helens player appeared hurt and a St. Helens assistant coach immediately walked onto the field and demanded to see Stephens’ birth certificate, video shows. A second St. Helens coach followed, asking for her birthdate. Both violated tournament rules, Hedgecock said.

“The only words you can give to the opposing players is encouragement,” Hedgecock said Friday. “A kid should not have to deal with that.”

An Astoria coach quickly intervened, standing between the 11-year-old and the St. Helens coaches, and the game soon resumed.

Stephens is about 5-foot-10 and a strong hitter, Hedgecock said, which may have triggered the opposing team’s reaction. She was eligible to play in the 10-and-under division because her birthday falls after the cutoff date, Hedgecock said.

St. Helens had multiple 9-year-olds, while Astoria fielded several older players, creating a size gap that Hedgecock said “was unsettling to the coaches and the parents.”

At the end of the game, the St. Helens assistant coach who had interrupted the game displayed what Hedgecock described as an obscene gesture.

Stephens’ mother, Tracy Burchfield, said this week that she’s trying to move on following days of intense media coverage. “I need to focus on life and take a break,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Stephens previously said during her May 19 Good Morning America appearance that the experience was “scary” and that she was taken aback by the St. Helens assistant coach at the time. “I was just looking at him, ‘like, what the heck is going on?’” she said.

Hedgecock suspended the male assistant coach for the rest of the year, the female coach, also an assistant, for 30 days, and placed the team’s head coach on probation for the rest of the year.

The Fastpitch Association organizes fastpitch softball tournaments across the country and in Canada and Mexico.

USA Softball of Oregon, a local branch of the national USA Softball organization, held a separate hearing Wednesday about the confrontation, said Kris Welch, the organization’s president. But Welch declined to elaborate about any disciplinary action the organization took, citing the coaches’ privacy.