The Board of Directors for the Mad River Fastpitch Softball Association believes that communication is immensely valuable within our organization. As a result, we feel the need to update you after our recent Board meeting:1) Currently, there are over 100 softball registrants ranging from ASA age 3 in the new KinderPlay program to age 13 in the 14u recreational and travel ball programs. It’s quite a bit of data to process so please be patient with us while we organize! We are very pleased about our numbers especially on our first go within our new organizational structure. We also want to make sure we do it right so are taking our time to do so! We hope that is okay with all of you (we know that waiting can be a killer!).
2) Recreational team distribution is being based on several factors, including assessment information collected on Sunday, March 4th, which, by the way, the turn out was FABULOUS! Thank you very much for making the commitment to be there. We know that some of you came from Willow Creek, some from Garberville, and some raced home from the basketball tournament in Crescent City! Your efforts were much appreciated! Along with assessment information, geographics, willingness to travel to a neighboring city, and special requests (in the hopes for team parity) will be evaluated. The first round of team distributions have been completed and will be shared later this week.
3) We are currently gearing up for our recreational coaches meeting, tentatively set for Tuesday, March 13th. We have contacted individuals who are interested in coaching at the recreational level. If you fall into that category and have not notified us of your interest to coach, please do so ASAP. We are also seeking "support personnel" if any of you are interested in helping and working with your daughter's team. (An email response works fine)
4) Practice sites have been secured to start practice the week of March 19th. That should give recreational coaches plenty of time to contact players and notify them of their first practice. Any paperwork that parents and players still have on hand can be turned in to any Mad River Softball Board Member or to the coaches themselves on the 1st day of the practice.
5) As for travel, the response back to my initial "Calling all Travel Players" email about the upcoming Medford tournament about a week or so ago, has been slow. We know there is plenty of interest because many of you indicated that on the registration forms and we even have some travel deposits! It is our feeling that you may not know enough or understand enough about how that program works or maybe you are joining us late? We aren't really sure. We understand that many of the details might be fuzzy as we are working cooperatively with the Fogg organization to create a stronger, united, and more competitive travel program and some of you might just be new to the notion of travel ball itself. Our plans are to get more thorough travel information out relatively soon but unfortunately, time has been very limited with all the details we are working through relating to the rec program. Quite simply, there are not enough hours in the day for all the things we'd like to accomplish!)
As a result, the Board has decided not to rush into anything that might jeopardize the integrity of our program and has canceled the notion of heading to Medford. This occurred for a few reasons: 1) 10u, 12u, and 14u did not have enough players to field a team based on the feedback I was provided by the email Kelly sent, 2) word from Medford is only one 14u team is signed up for this Medford tournament and it is not us! There are approximately three 12u teams and there are ZERO teams signed up for the 10u division. 3) It has been our experience that when we don't listen to instinct and try to move something forward before it is ready, it often backfires. It just seems to make sense to slow the process down, build it right, put the players in place appropriately, and focus on the next tournament contest scheduled in April. The Board figures that if things go well over the course of our travel adventure, we can always extend and/or expand our travel season somewhere else within the travel schedule to make up for that missed contest date.
If any of you have any questions, comments, concerns, or feedback, whatsoever, please be sure to speak up!! Thank you
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