Greg Anderson, former personal trainer for Barry Bonds, found his youth baseball league coaching privileges suspended due to concerned parents questioning why the former steroids dealer is on the field coaching kids.

Up until recently, Anderson had been involved as an assistant coach with the Capitol Electric team in the Burlingame Youth Baseball Association in the San Francisco Bay Area.

However, a parent filed a complaint about his involvement in the BALCO scandal, thereby casting doubt on the league’s judgment which ultimately led to his exclusion from the field.

Convicted of dealing steroids, Anderson is purported to have supplied home run champion Barry Bonds and other major league players with performance enhancing drugs.

During the Bonds trial, Anderson refused to testify on the stand about the major league slugger’s steroid usage. The court, unimpressed with his resistance, rewarded Anderson with three weeks in jail.

Up until the present season, league president Mike Brunicardi said that there had been no complaints about Anderson but in light of the recent situation, he will be prohibited from being out on the field during games.

“Anderson is free to register as a coach next season, but will have to undergo a background check like other volunteers.”

While it’s unlikely we’d see him dealing steroids to 12-year olds, Anderson has a lot of past mistakes to account for. If he chooses to register as a coach, there will be some explaining on his part when his background report comes back.

A township in Pennsylvania is letting sporting groups know they’ll face monetary consequences for failing to offer evidence coaches have passed criminal and sex offender checks.

Peters Township Parks and Recreation will now level a $500 fine against any organization or group, which cannot provide documentation their coaches, have undergone a criminal background check with the Pennsylvania State Police.

The Peters Township council passed a 2006 ordinance requiring the background checks. If anyone thought they could blow off the background screening process before, perhaps a hit to their wallet might make them think otherwise.

Michelle Harmel, Director of Peters Township Parks and Recreation Department, said, “The difficulty hasn’t been with getting people to get their clearances, but it’s been difficult to achieve 100 percent compliance with the policy.”

Nine separate sporting organizations presently make use of the fields and 100 percent compliance has been somewhat of an elusive maintained standard.

Some of the sports groups have had difficulty getting coaches to take the time to have the background screenings conducted. Some of the other organizations have simply been unreachable despite multiple outreach attempts.

“They tell us that their coaches are volunteers and it’s hard to get them to do the background checks,” she said. “Short of saying it’s inconvenient for them, it’s what we are being told.”

And it’s not as though Peters Township has made the screening process an ugly maze of time-consuming red tape. Temporary certifications are available for coaches and volunteers online through the Pennsylvania State Police while the main security clearance is processed.

Requirements across the various sports groups and organizations are inconsistent, with some calling for proper clearances for coaches while others apparently don’t have any such requirements on the books.

We all know about the potential negative consequences when sports clubs and athletic associations fail to properly screen coaches and volunteers. If it takes monetary fines to wake people up to the importance of background screening then so be it.

Softball Ace Chelsea Pedley is watching her star rise as one of the top softball pitchers in her native state of Florida. Her love of the game has taken it beyond being just a sport and turning it into a full blown passion.

However, this promising young athlete was almost thrown off track in 2010 she began developing a relationship with her travel team coach which began to move into inappropriate territory.

Just 17 years old at the time, Chelsea became involved with 39 year old Ronald Figueroa to a point where her identity and sense of direction became blurred in the face of something beyond her experience.

“I don’t know how he did it, but I completely changed. He made me believe that he really cared for me and that he wasn’t going to hurt me and he used that to his own power to get me to basically do anything.”

The relationship between the two started innocently enough but when the travel coach began to press her for sex, the young softball prodigy knew the situation had taken a turn for the worse.

As in many other situations of this sort, Chelsea thought that bring the issue to the attention of her parents or the school might jeopardize her chances for a college scholarship and other opportunities.

“This was all about softball. I didn’t want to get kicked off the team because all I wanted in the end was a college scholarship.”

Despite being preyed upon, Chelsea would not remain silent over what had been done to her.

After going to her parents with the news, the police were called in and Ronald Figueroa learned the hard way what happens when you betray the trust and security of a impressionable young person.

Since the incident, Chelsea has gone to lead her softball team to the Florida statewide final four and had recently signed to play for George Washington University where she’ll begin playing for the D.C. school in Fall of 2011.

Chelsea is also taking her story to the Florida state capitol to emphasize the need for stricter guidelines and regulations governing individuals who want to coach kids and teenagers.

“We need to know who’s coaching our kids. We need them to have background checks.”

Chelsea knows it will likely be a long process to change the way travel team coaches are screened but she is more than willing to undertake the effort if it will help prevent other players from experiencing what she did.

If anything she wants one message to get out as far and wide as possible to other players:

“”It is OK to tell, and it’s better. It helps a lot of people.”