I know it doesn’t feel like it outside, but if you have a little tyke (or teen) planning to play baseball in the spring, it’s time to start thinking about it.
As a former coach and baseball enthusiast, I would say it’s always time to talk about baseball! No time like the present.
Around town, many leagues have already started the registration process. And if they haven’t already begun sign-ups, other leagues will do so early next month.
If you aren’t part of the baseball registration process, you might not understand why there is a need to do sign-ups so soon. But as in most operations, youth baseball leagues have to work back from a specified date.
In a youth baseball league – especially a recreational league – you start with Opening Day (let’s say, for argument’s sake, it is April 1). It takes you all the time between now and then to allow leagues, teams and coaches to get ready for play.
Commissioners have to know how many coaches you will need to recruit and that is driven by the number of registrants and the amount of field time you have available. To do fair placement of players, most leagues will have ‘tryouts’ and those are scheduled, in advance.
Tryout dates are scheduled in advance (usually in mid to late February) with the idea that most teams will begin playing games in early April and they need a month of practice time – especially with spring break thrown in the mix – to get ready for Opening Day.
All of that adds up to the fact that baseball signups have to take place this time of year.
Some leagues will do ‘registration days’ at a specific location. Coaches and league officials will be on-hand at a specific location (usually on a Saturday or on successive Saturdays) to accept payment and distribute registration forms.
Other leagues – such as the one I was involved with, Farragut Baseball, Inc. – do ongoing registration (with a certain start/stop date). FB, Inc. has gone to an online (paperless) registration process. I’m sure this is much more efficient and less labor intensive than what we did. Actually, we were talking about making this conversion and had begun investigating various options when I finished my term as President at the end of 2008.
Alas, we did registration the old fashioned way – with paper and pen. Our forms were located at Pak Mail in Farragut (later the name of the establishment changed to Goin’ Postal). We had a lock box located at the facility.
Parents were asked to complete a registration form and drop it (with a check) into the slot on the side of the box. A couple times a week – and more often the closer we got to the registration date – we’d empty the box and begin processing the forms.
That gave us a good take on how many players were registering by league (and, in turn, that let commissioners know how many teams they were going to have and how many coaches they were going to need).
I’m sure the online system the league is using now also provides some tracking data to the current Prez.
It’s a fun and fascinating process, I think. But then again, I love logistics, charts and data!
Anyway, registration is underway (or soon will be) for youth baseball leagues across town. The natural tendency, of course, is to procrastinate and do that registration the last weekend. But, if you have a few moments, I’d encourage you to go ahead and sign up your little slugger now.
What’s the wait? Like I said, there’s No time like the present.
JG
(Source: knoxcounty.org)
Originally posted 1/23/2013
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