PETITION TO RESTORE INTEGRITY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND FAIRNESS IN LITTLE LEAGUE

We Call on Little League International to Immediately:

• Remove Oklahoma District Administrator Mindy Abbott for facilitating and enabling repeated violations of Little League regulations, creating an unacceptable conflict of confidence, and failing to ensure fair and impartial administration of Little League in Oklahoma.
• Remove Southwest Regional Director Blaine Whitmire for failing to properly investigate and act upon extensive documented evidence presented during the 2025 tournament, allowing ineligible participation to continue despite repeated warnings from leagues, coaches, and district officials. 
• Revoke the Tulsa National Little League Charter for repeated conduct that has brought the integrity of Little League into question and for operating in a manner fundamentally inconsistent with the mission and principles of community-based Little League.
• Issue a formal written public apology to the children, families, coaches, volunteers, and leagues whose once-in-a-lifetime opportunities were taken because Little League leadership failed to enforce its own rules consistently in 2025 and 2026.
  Publicly acknowledge that the 2025 eligibility protests were mishandled and commit to transparent, consistent enforcement of Little League regulations moving forward.
• Vacate all 2025 and 2026 Oklahoma State and Southwest Regional tournament titles and honors awarded to Tulsa National Little League. Little League has previously vacated tournament championships when it determined that eligibility rules had been violated. We ask Little League to apply those same standards consistently here.

Why We Are Demanding Action

Little League was founded on one simple promise:

Every child competes under the same rules.

That promise was broken.

Little League Senior Vice President Dan Velte publicly stated that these matters are handled on a “case-by-case basis.” To the families who lost opportunities because of inconsistent enforcement, that sounds like a polite way of saying the rules apply to some—but not to all. Little League’s rulebook was never intended to be optional or selectively enforced. The same rules should produce the same outcome, regardless of the league, the team, or the individuals involved.

Justice cannot be case-by-case. Integrity cannot be case-by-case. The rules cannot be case-by-case. They must apply equally to every child, every league, every time.

In 2025, Little League officials were presented with extensive documentation alleging multiple violations involving player eligibility, residency, roster construction, tournament participation, draft procedures, and conflicts of interest involving Tulsa National Little League’s tournament team. Those concerns were dismissed, allowing the team to continue its championship run despite the evidence presented. 

In 2026, many of those same concerns ultimately resulted in Tulsa National’s disqualification from the Little League Softball World Series pathway.

The evidence did not suddenly appear.

The rules did not suddenly change.

The only thing that changed was Little League’s willingness to enforce them.

Children from legitimate Little League programs lost opportunities that can never be replaced. Families invested countless hours, thousands of dollars, and years of dedication only to learn that the rules were not applied equally.

This petition is not about punishing children.

It is about holding adults accountable.

It is about ensuring that no administrator, district office, regional office, or local league is permitted to ignore the very rules they are entrusted to uphold.

Why Revoking the Tulsa National Charter Is Necessary

Some may argue that revoking Tulsa National Little League’s charter would punish children. It would not.

According to the information documented in our protest, Tulsa National’s softball program consisted only of the hand-selected players assembled for postseason tournament play, rather than a traditional community-based Little League program with multiple regular-season teams. 

As a result, revoking the charter would affect fewer than 25 players—not hundreds of local children. Those players would remain free to participate in Little League through properly chartered leagues for which they are eligible. The purpose of revoking the charter is not to punish children; it is to end a system that, according to the protest, was used to circumvent Little League’s rules and undermine fair competition. 

Little League charters exist to serve communities—not to provide a vehicle for hand-selecting tournament teams. When a charter is used in a manner that undermines the principles of fairness, transparency, and equal opportunity, Little League International has both the authority and the responsibility to act.

The allegations outlined in the formal protest—including the assembly of a nearly intact travel-ball roster, player eligibility concerns, alleged conflicts of interest, and failures to investigate documented evidence—were not isolated complaints. They represented a systemic failure of leadership that ultimately culminated in Tulsa National’s 2026 disqualification. 

When leadership ignores documented evidence one year, then reaches the opposite conclusion the next using substantially the same issues, confidence in the entire organization is lost.

Little League teaches children that integrity matters.

That honesty matters.

That accountability matters.

Those lessons mean nothing if the adults responsible for enforcing them are not held to the very same standard.

No child should ever lose a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because adults refused to do their jobs.

Little League cannot restore public trust with silence.

It can only restore trust through accountability.

Remove those responsible.

Revoke the Tulsa National Little League charter.

Acknowledge the failures of 2025.

Apologize to the families who were harmed.

Restore integrity to the game that millions of children deserve.

Precedent 

The accountability requested in this petition is neither unprecedented nor excessive. It is entirely consistent with actions Little League International has taken in prior cases involving player eligibility and violations of tournament rules.

Following its investigation into the Jackie Robinson West Little League scandal, Little League International determined that league officials and the District Administrator knowingly violated residency and eligibility rules by placing ineligible players on the tournament team. As a result, Little League:

Vacated all tournament victories, including the United States Championship.
Removed the District Administrator from his position.
Suspended the team manager from Little League activities.
Placed Jackie Robinson West Little League on probation and suspended its tournament privileges until new league leadership was installed and the league demonstrated full compliance with Little League rules.
Appointed a Special District Advisor to oversee the district and restore confidence in its operations. 
Little League itself stated that these actions were necessary because “fair play is valued over the importance of wins and losses” and because adults—not children—must be held accountable when they violate the rules. 

That precedent demonstrates two important principles:

Little League has both the authority and the responsibility to discipline leagues and administrators whose actions undermine the integrity of tournament play.
Little League has long recognized that accountability should fall on the adults responsible—not on the children who relied on them to follow the rules. 
The remedies requested in this petition are not extraordinary. They are grounded in Little League’s own history, disciplinary authority, and publicly established precedent.

If Little League believed these measures were appropriate to protect the integrity of the game in the Jackie Robinson West case, then those same principles should be applied consistently whenever comparable violations occur.