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Please forgive my
frustration, but I thought we had kept all members fully
informed with multiple articles in this newsletter, items on our
website, discussions with your club delegates at formal
meetings, and posts on the Hills InstantNews blog and RSS feed.
This saga has been going on since April.
From the number of
phone calls and emails I've received in the last few weeks, and
their content, it's obvious that the message isn't getting
through for some reason. I guess it's probably because winter is
not generally seen as "baseball time" and many families have
simply woken up one morning in August and been confronted with
something new and different and perhaps frightening.
So here's another shot at trying to reassure you about what's happening. I'll use
a Q&A format in line with the number and stridency of the calls
and emails I've received. Enjoy ...
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Ref |
Yeah but,
no but, yeah but, no but .... |
Bzzzt: The
correct answer is ... |
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Q1 |
Are
Hills going to run a Little League competition this
season? |
Yes we
are. We announced it in June and were the first Sydney
Association to do so.
Click here. |
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Q2 |
How
does it affect my weekend U-12 and/or U-14 club team? |
It
doesn't. Not at all. The Hills LL programme will be
run as a completely separate competition commencing
later this year or after Xmas 2007 {precise dates
undecided yet}. We're going to talk to everyone involved
before finalising dates. |
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Q3 |
So our
U/12's and U/14's run the same as they did last year? |
Yes.
I'll say
that again louder:- Y E S ! |
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Q4 |
I hear
that Hills have done some sort of sweetheart deal to
circumvent the strict requirements of Little League.
Is
that true? |
Totally
incorrect. Hills people have spent countless hours
negotiating with BNSW and the ABF to ensure that our
plans are 100% aligned with their expectations. We
completely understand and respect the need for LL to be
implemented nationally under a common framework, and
that there is no room for a local League to make up its
own rules. Although the precise details of our
implementation are not what the ABF was expecting
originally, we believe we have their support for
what we're doing.
There is no
special deal. The outcome of our discussions are
available to everyone in Australian baseball: either
from us, Al Connors or Glen Willott. |
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Q5 |
So have
Hills signed some sort of special contract with BNSW or
the ABF? |
No. We
have signed the standard Little League Charter
Application, as have dozens of other baseball organisations around Australia. We have made a couple of minor
modifications to the documents, but we do not believe
those will be rejected by BNSW or the ABF.
If you're interested, click here. |
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Q6 |
Hills
seem to be troublemakers.
Why can't we just do what
everyone else is doing?
My kid is not interested in
politics. |
We
don't see our actions as making trouble. We believe
we're just trying to help develop a framework that will
work, instead of blindly accepting one that might not.
We had a couple of major concerns with LL as originally
proposed, and the ABF had a couple of major concerns
with our initial reaction. Since then, we've worked hard
together to understand each other. We think we're now both on the same
wavelength.
None of
this should affect an individual player. All of us are
working to make the sport better for the kids, not
worse. |
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Q7 |
I have
a friend in {insert some other Association here}
who says they are doing {insert something different to Hills} this season.
Why can't we do that too? |
At this
moment in time, I believe the other Sydney Junior
Associations have made the following decisions. We're not out on
our own here ...
-
Ryde/Hornsby, Bankstown, Macarthur and Manly have chosen to
completely replace their weekend U/10 - U/12
competitions with the Little League format, and ...
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Greater West, Cumberland and Cronulla have chosen to
retain their regular formats, and overlay LL on this
as an additional activity, the same as Hills.
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Q8 |
My son
has been selected to play in his club's Division #1 U/12
team. I can't afford to send him to State or National LL
tournaments. Should I ask my club for him to be dropped
back to Division #2? |
Absolutely not. There is no nexus between his club team
and a Hills Little League squad. If you don't want him
to participate in Little League for any reason
(including the potential additional cost), then simply
don't enroll him in the LL programme.
Little
League squads under our model are selected by draft, not
on the basis of club team membership. See
below. |
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Q9 |
My son
is playing in Hills U/11 this season although he's only
nine. He turns 10 in Feb 2008. Can he get into LL? |
Absolutely. The Hills LL programme is open to all
children who meet the age criteria (born 1/5/95 to
30/4/98) regardless of ability. Age is the only thing
that matters. |
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Q10 |
My son
is playing for a club in the Hills U/14 competition. He
turns 13 in July next year. Can he play in LL too? |
Yes, no
problem. As at April 30th 2008, he will still be aged 12
and thus qualifies for the LL programme. |
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Q11 |
Does a
player need to be registered in baseball to participate
in LL? Although my son is registered, he has a bunch of
friends who are playing Indoor Soccer until Xmas. They
would like to join LL afterwards. |
Any
individual player who is registered with BNSW will be
able to join the Hills LL programme at nominal cost.
Other
children who want to play in the LL competition ONLY
{without being registered for weekend baseball} will
need to pay a fee to BNSW, but we expect that to be
affordable. |
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Q12 |
Will the
Hills plan allow my son/daughter a chance to compete in
the State LL Championships? |
Absolutely.
LL in Hills will run much the same as every other
similar programme in Australia and is fully compliant
with BNSW and ABF requirements to compete in State and
National tournaments. Tthe main difference is simply
that it's an additional activity:- it
doesn't replace the weekend club
competitions this season. |
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Q13 |
What about
next season? Is the Hills plan a permanent one or will
we be changing our weekend formats next season? |
We'll worry
about next season next year. We need to see what happens
this season first. Our primary concern this year was not
to decimate our U/14 competitions. See
below for more. |
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OK, so what
exactly is Hills proposing? |
Our initial
proposal is available
here, and it hasn't changed much since it was
endorsed by all clubs on June 12th. The changes and
clarifications that have been made since are these:-
- It
will now start sometime between November 07 and January
08, and conclude before the State LL Tournament
around Easter of 2008. It will involve a minimum of
12 games over a minimum of six weeks. A few
double-headers are a probability to get all the
games in.
- We
do not yet know the cost of participation, but we'll
keep it as low as possible.
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What did we change in the
Charter Application? |
| In the
interests of transparent governance, I have chosen to
publish the documentation that we signed to participate
in Little League. The modified document is available
here.
In summary,
the three modifications were:-
- We
agreed to comply with the LL rules "as modified
by the ABF or BNSW". This change is
self-evident. Omitting it would bind us to some
regulations which are totally inappropriate to
Australia, something which the ABF has already
admitted 1 by stating publicly that we
all need to use common sense in applying
international rules locally.
- We
struck out the clause that required us to fly
somebody to Williamsport (USA) to sort out any
unresolved issues. Such a trip would cost us many
thousands of dollars and I couldn't see any issue
that would warrant such a cost. If anything attracts
that much aggro, we should simply hand back our
Charter and retire hurt. On behalf of Hills, I am
perfectly happy to submit to any arbitration imposed
by our friends in Brisbane and accept their decision
as final, without a right to appeal to the US
headquarters.
- We
inserted some words that made it clear that we
cannot consent to LL Inc deriving royalty income
from any purchase of equipment that we [Hills] would
otherwise make anyway. We have thus limited LL Inc's
revenue rights ONLY to our purchase of equipment
used for LL activities.
We think
all three modifications are reasonable, and have no
reason to believe that BNSW or the ABF will reject them. |
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What about next year? |
| One of
our original concerns about LL this year has in fact
reduced itself to our main remaining concern, now that
we've dealt with most of the other issues via discussion
with BNSW and the ABF. The problem is that by adopting
the LL age-date cutoffs in normal weekend club
competitions, we would decimate the U/14 conferences,
preventing us offering three grades in U/14's. That
would hurt our overall numbers, and be a source of
irritation for many players who want to progress
from U/12's to U/14's this year.
However,
there is a body of opinion that says the U/14, U/16 and
U/18 National age-groups might change next year (or the
year after) to become U/15, U/17 and U/19 instead. This
policy is under the control of the
IBAF,
of which our own ABF is an affiliate, and it governs
most amateur international baseball activities.
If that
does happen, then we'll jump for joy and immediately
change our U/14's to 14U2. Our existing
Youth League already offers places for U/17 players,
albeit conditionally, so changing that to 16U2
would be a minor step. From there, the natural younger
age-group would become 12U2, and thus align
perfectly with the LL model.
If it
all unfolds like that in 2008/2009, then Hills will
adopt the LL format in our weekend competitions. If not,
then I guess we need to assess what's best for everyone
after the end of this season. Personally, I think we'll
be moving to an U/15 and U/17 format next season
regardless. We didn't do so this year because there
simply wasn't time to implement it, but the concept has
real merit. |
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| Resources ... |
| Here's
the backup documentation, for those of you who are
interested ...
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Footnotes ... |
1 Alan Connors, at the NSWIS seminar.
2 Terminology: We've all become
used to terms like "U/12" and "U/14". Those terms have
traditionally meant "Under the age of xx as of
December 31st each year". Under the LL conventions,
which might perhaps also be adopted by the IBAF, those
terms would be replaced by new ones such as "12U" and
"14U", which would mean "Aged 12 and Under" or "Aged
14 and Under", and the cutoff would change to April
30th each year instead of December 31st. |
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