Why is There Such a Heated Rivalry Between Two Danbury Youth Sports Organizations?

I'm going to ask some questions about Danbury that my wife told me not to ask.

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I'm going to kick over a rock I've been told not to look under and I'll probably regret it in the end. First, while I have many pictures of Danbury Youth Sports, I picked the one with my daughter (Vida) only because I don't want to specifically involve anyone else/anyone else's children in the discussion, I know Vida (pictured above) can take the heat.

I've lived in Danbury for about six years and my kids play sports. My one son and my daughter are the most involved and they are Trojans. It's my understanding there are two main youth sports organizations in the City, there is DAYO and and HCYS.

DAYO stands for Danbury Athletic Youth Organization and HCYS stands for Hat City Youth Sports. The DAYO kids are Trojans, the HCYS kids are Hatters and to complicate things even further, there used to be Vikings but we'll just deal with the Hatters and Trojans.

I'm told there is a long-standing feud between these two organizations and for the most part, I am puzzled as to why. I mentioned this rivalry on my radio show yesterday (12/1/21) and it took about two minutes to get a message from one of our listeners. A woman named Tracey messaged me and said:

"The rivalry between DAYO & HCYS has been going on since I was a kid, I'm 41 now."

"That's a long time" I told Tracey. It was on my mind (the rivalry) because of something my wife Erica told me on Tuesday. She relayed to me that the Trojans just got a grant check of $2,500 from the City of Danbury that will help the 12u Trojans football team afford there upcoming trip to Florida for Nationals.

This was the City of Danbury Facebook post about the awarded funds.

Wonderful news right? Well she also told me that there were some negative comments that followed and other people asked what the city will do for the HCYS program. (Some of the negative comments have been removed from the thread at this point.)

I won't say people's names/comments, but the reaction to the news was not nearly as positive as I thought it would be. To the city's credit, they posted a link to a fundraiser for the HCYS girls cheer-leading team who is also headed to Nationals for their accomplishments.

The topic came up in the first place because a listener of ours asked me to mention an upcoming event HCYS is having, and I did that shout-out for the kids, even though my kids are Trojans.

Look, I don't want to come off as self-righteous but this is dumb, the more questions I ask as to why there is a feud, the more I hear ridiculous answers. There are two youth organizations in Danbury, they do their own thing, as far as I know they don't compete against one another on the field and that is it.

I wear maroon and gold when I watch my kids play, you wear orange and blue, we are all Danbury people, we should be united. The thing that really makes no sense to me is that I've never heard a bad word about any Danbury Youth coach, in either organization. This means our kids are all benefiting and that is what it's about, or supposed to be about.

If you would like to put some money down and help the Danbury Trojans U12 Football Team travel to Nationals, you can donate here.

If you would like to put some money down and help the Danbury Hatters D14 Cheer team go to Nationals, you can donate here.

Congrats to both teams on their amazing accomplishments!

Other things I'd like to say on the matter include:

• This was just a reminder that this is all about the kids, not some beef that we invent for no reason. Please don't make my wife right, please don't let her say I told you so when this blows up in my face, and I "regret it."
• I think the Trojans applied for the grant. You can't win it, if you are not in it.
• Name four things your kids know about this feud. Oh, you can't name any? That is because you haven't told them anything, you know it's petty. I get petty a lot so I know what it looks like.
• How about that picture of my daughter? One day she said she didn't want to go to practice so Erica and I tried to reinforce the importance of practicing with your team. She responded by saying "I don't need to practice, I already know everything about cheer." I don't know where she got that from?