SYAC League Policies
Putting Friends Together on Teams |
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| In the Instructional League, we ask parents for the names of up to three kids they'd like their daughter to be placed with together on the same team. Some parents do not make the request, but experience has shown us that even those who don't would probably have picked a few kids from their child's kindergarten class, so we go to great pains to put kids from the same schools on teams together. The main reason we do this has nothing whatsoever to do with carpooling or parental convenience, but rather with the process of socialization.
At the age of five and six, playing on a softball team is one of the first things a child does without her parents (with the exception of nursey school and day camp). Many of these children are terrified of the unknown, so having a friend or acquaintance go through the process with them eases the transition. Once they move on to the Pony League, many parents are shocked to learn that their child has been placed on a team with few or even no friends. Sometimes they are even placed on teams with no one from their school! This is because from the Pony League forward, the leagues are competitive and girls' skills are evaluated to help us create balanced teams. Where does socialization come in? Think of the first day of school. You child knew almost no one. Yet shortly thereafter, she made friends. The same applies to camp. Maybe she went to camp with a friend, but it's an easy bet that she also made friends at camp. Why then are parents so resisitant to the idea of their child meeting new kids in sports? It's always been a mystery to us, since the evidence of how good it is for children to meet other children is so overwhelmingly positive. We're thinking of the first day of middle school. Maybe you can remember yours. Some kids only knew the kids they went to school with all their lives. But some kids seemed to know kids from all over the place. How? Simple! They played sports. And many children meet their lifetime best friends from that team where they didn't know anyone. Imagine passing up that opportunity? That's why we urge parents to prepare their children for Pony League rather than to try and prevent the experience by requesting that their child be placed on another team or deciding to pull her out of the league. [See "Refunds" below] |
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Sponsor Benefits |
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| If you are the sponsor of a SYAC team, your name or logo will be applied to the shirts or banner (Travel sponsors' names appear on the team banner) of the team. At your option--and at no extra charge--we can link your team name (on your team's page) to your web site.
The logo you supply for use on our shirts and banners may only contain the name or logo of your business. It may not contain your address, phone number(s), email address(es), URLs or days and hours of business operation. Sponsoring a SYAC team is an act of community service and support. It is not, in the pure technical definition, advertising. As a sponsor, you may also distribute items to team members and their families that contain your name or logo, but the same rules as described above apply. |
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Team "Stacking" |
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| A team may be "stacked" by putting too many good players together. The result is a team that wins more than its fair share of games and undermines the principles on which the league is founded. But a team may also be stacked by putting too many poor players together.
Remember: the objectives is to learn the game, learn to win and lose with grace and to be a team player. If you win all the time, you never learn how to handle losing. And if you lose all the time, you never feel the "thrill of victory." These are actually skills that sports are employed to teach children. It helps them deal with adversity in a positive way. For these reasons, the league began moving in the direction of establishing teams based upon player skill ratings back in the 1980s. Before that time, the team formation process of a virtual free-for-all in which parents did whatever they could to put together teams with their friends and/or their kids' friends. Trading after the teams were drafter further enabled this activity. The unfortunate result, however, was a handful of teams that always or nearly always won and a handful of teams that always or nearly always lost. Even though most kids don't even remember what happened by the time they get home, that's more true when you win some and lose some. When you always lose, or almost always lose, you don't come back and what you really lose is a sense of the game. A certain segment of our local population believes that sports are merely a social activity, one that should be conducted only with friends. If people are more competitive, they say, those people should play on Travel teams. But Travel teams are not just for more competitive people; they are for more athletic and competitive people, and they are not--and should not--be open to anyone just because the "regular league" isn't competitive enough. Competition is a key ingredient of sports. Too much of anything is not good. Our policy is that if you want your child to play in a truly non-competitive arena, make a play date with their friends. They don't have to play softball, keep score or learn anything. If you want them to grow as individuals, learn a great sport, meet new people, learn how to handle pressure and adversity, then bring them to SYAC and they will surely benefit from the experience. |
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Use of Email Addresses |
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| SYAC Girls Softball collects Email addresses for the sole purpose of contacting our coaches and players about games and practices. We do not distribute them to anyone outside the organization, including sponsors. |
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Refunds |
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| We have a hard and fast refund deadline of March 1st. This is because by March 1st, we have selected all our coaches and sponsors, we have paid for uniforms, we have ranked all children by skill level and we have prepared our player draft, all in pursuit of the elusive goal of having fairly balanced teams.
Some parents of children in Pony League and above call us after the teams are made up and their child doesn't know anyone on her team to tell us their daughter doesn't want to play any more and request a refund. This is precisely why the refund deadline is before the teams are set up. They claim they had no idea we had a deadline. When we point out that it's posted on the website (in the FAQs), and that the FAQs are posted on large posters in the hallways on R&E nights, they say they didn't see it. There's only so much we can do to make information available. We are a volunteer, not-for-profit organization. Once we commit your money to making uniforms, giving a refund is like asking us to come up with the money out of our pockets. Please respect the refund deadline and instead of taking it out on us, explain the importance of making a commitment to your child. It's an opportunity for them to learn an important lesson. |
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Rescheduling Games for Reasons Not Related to Weather |
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| Sometimes, despite the concerted effort made to consider all known obstacles to game play when creating our schedules, we schedule a game that one or neither team can make. Perhaps the coaches or kids have prior commitments that we were not aware of when creating the schedule, or perhaps the coaches know in advance that they will not be able to field teams that night.
It is the responsibility of the coaches to notify their commission one full week in advance of such a situation. The commissioner with then contact the coach(es) with a reschedule date. As a coach, it is your responsibililty to inform the parents on your team of the schedule at the beginning of the season and ask them to notify you as quickly as possible of any conflicts they have which will prevent their child from playing a particular game. If you do this before the season gets underway, and request that they notify you if they have any sudden changes of plan, you can head off most of these situations in advance. |
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Our policy regarding town and school policies |
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| The Town of Oyster Bay grants us the use of fields in their park facilities. The Syosset Central School District grants us the use of fields and other school facilities to conduct our league activities. It is our policy to adhere to the policies of these two organizations.
We present some of their policies on our website as a convenience and a courtesy to our players, coaches, parents and sponsors. We hope you'll take a moment to read the ones we feel are of particular significance to our players and spectators. |