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Coach's Conduct
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT AND PROFANE LANGUAGE DIRECTED TOWARD OPPOSING COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS, SPECTATORS, AND UMPIRES WILL NOT BE TOLERATED WHILE COACHING YOUTH SOFTBALL. THE USE OF TOBACCO IS PROHIBITED AND THE CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES IS NOT PERMITTED ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME ON THE BALL FIELDS OF THE YORK COUNTY JUNIOR GIRLS SOFTBALL LEAGUE.
As a coach of youth sports, you have an important opportunity and an obligation to be a positive role model in the physical and social development of the youth who participate on your team. Your actions at practices and games will not only reflect on you as an individual, but also on the area that your team represents. Always remember that our league exists for ALL of our players to have an opportunity to enjoy playing the sport of fast pitch softball. It is not a platform for a coach to act irresponsibly and behave childishly.
Should you have a problem or complaint about another coach's behavior or actions on the field, or if you have any problems with an umpire in particular, please NEVER get into a shouting match or argument with them during the course of the game or even after the game. You will only cause more problems for yourself if you do not deal with those situations in an appropriate manner. There are effective procedures that you can follow to file complaints about opposing coaches or umpires. Simply forward a written letter about the problem to the league president or the umpire association, and your complaints will be dealt with in a professional manner.
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Check Your Equipment
Coaches are reminded to check your players' equipment often for safety reasons. Discard any batting helmets that are cracked or have missing padding. Umpires can and will remove defective equipment from the game if they make that determination.
Effective with the 2003 season, all batting helmets must now be equipped with chin straps and the chin straps must be worn properly... under the chin. No batter or base runner should ever step on the field without having a chin strap on the batting helmet. ASA made chin straps mandatory beginning in 2003 and they are mandatory in our league. Coaches face serious liability problems if your players are not wearing chin straps if a batting helmet comes off during play and the player is injured by a thrown or batted ball. You do not want to put yourself in that situation by violating this safety requirement for your players. If any coaches observe other teams violating the chin strap rule or any other safety issues that place their players at risk of serious injury, please report this to the league president ASAP. Parents should also speak up if coaches are allowing their players to play without chin straps.
Also, effective January 1, 2005 ASA will require face guards or masks on batting helmets. It is highly recommended by the league that if your team or area is considering the purchase of new batting helmets, make sure that they have NOCSAE approved face guards on them now. Face guards on batting helmets WILL be mandatory beginning with the 2005 season.
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Use Of Fields For Pre-game Warmups
Coaches of the home field teams are reminded to allow the visiting team use of the field for pre-game warmups 20 minutes prior to the start of the game. The home team will have use of the field for pre-game warmups 30-20 minutes prior to the start of the game.This is now a league regulation, mandated by the league's board of directors, effective beginning with the 2003 season. Please use this on-field warm up period in an efficient and timely manner so that both teams will be off the field 5-10 minutes before the start of the game for the coaches to meet the umpires at home plate for the pre-game meeting. If any home field coaches are violating this courtesy to the visiting team, please file a report by e-mail to the league president at ycjgsoftball@aol.com .
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Pre-Game Meeting
Coaches are reminded to meet at home plate, 5 minutes prior to game time, with the umpires and the team captains. Introductions, review of ground rules, and exchange of line up cards should take place at this time. Line up cards MUST have each player's first and last name, uniform number, and position listed. Expected players that have not arrived at the field by the time of the Pre-Game Meeting, should not be listed in the starting line up. Available substitutes may be listed at the bottom of the lineup card, although this is not a requirement. Players that arrive at the field late (after the line up cards have been exchanged), may be added to the team's substitute list at any time before or during the game.
All questions or variances of field ground rules and game play rules MUST be addressed at the Pre-Game Meeting and agreed to by BOTH TEAM COACHES AND UMPIRES. Heated discussions or arguments about what field ground rules or game play rules that you are playing by should never occur during the game.
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Reporting Game Results
All Major and Minor Division coaches are responsible for reporting their team's winning scores to the league. Winning coaches should report scores the night of the league game if possible. There will be a two week deadline from the original game date to report a game status to the league either as a completed, forfeited, postponed, or suspended game.
LeagueLineup.com now has a feature that allows the league to accept scores from our coaches without the need to give them Administration acces to the league web sites. A "Score Reporting" link will appear at the top of the Schedules page. Clicking on this will bring you to the Schedule Search page with the Division password. Once the password is entered, the visitor will be able to enter game results directly. Once the game score is entered, the Standings page will automatically be updated. If you you do not have internet access and can not get another coach or someone else to enter your game report, call in your game report status to your league Commissioner by phone.
Coaches are reminded to please check the standings and game results on the league web site occasionally for any game score that you believe may have been incorrectly posted. Report errors to a league Commissioner or by sending a message to the league e-mail address ycjgsoftball@aol.com . If you can not contact a league Commissioner, call the league president, Dave Trump at 717-495-2830 as soon as possible so that corrections can be made. The standings, as shown on the league web site, are the current official standings. They are updated daily as scores are reported to the league. The final season standings will become official as of 10:00 pm on July 31, 2009. Teams with unreported scores after July 31st will be given a loss for each unreported score. There will be no exceptions. You will not be called by the league to ask for your unreported winning scores. They must be reported by you in order for your team to receive credit for the wins. Forfeited games must also be reported by the coach of the team not in violation of the forfeit, with the score reported as a 7-0 forfeit win. Coaches have found out in the past that not reporting their winning scores can make a difference in whether or not they qualify for the Major Division post-season playoffs. The league has no provisions for reporting scores of 7U Micro division games and all Fall Ball season games.
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18U Coaches Reporting Winning Scores to Newspaper
The York Daily Record newspaper has again agreed to publish the 18U Major scores from our league this summer. They have done a very good job of covering our league in the past. So, in order for this to work, it is imperative that the WINNING coach of each 18U GAME, call the York Daily Record sports department as soon as possible following your games and before 10:00 pm the night of the game. You MUST call the night of the game... not a day or two later when you get a chance. If you call in your 18U game results, the YDR newspaper will publish your scores, box scores and possibly a few brief highlites of your games. It is entirely up to all of our 18U Major coaches to make this work. The 18U Major schedule has been faxed to the York Daily Record sports department. They will be expecting your calls and willing to take your game results. Please make sure that your line up cards have first and last names of all starting players and substitutes as well as their starting positions, so that both coaches will know what players to give credit to for the highlites when calling the newspaper. Call the York Daily Record, Sunday night through Friday night, at 717-771-2000 before 10:00 pm.
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Rain Outs and Game Cancellations
Refer to the "Rain Out Info" page found on the Main Menu of this web site for information concerning the reporting of rained out games and cancellations.
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Forfeiting Games
MAJOR DIVISION GAMES - If a Major team does not have at least 8 players to start a scheduled game, that team MUST take a forfeit loss. If this happens at the field, the forfeiting team must pay both team's umpire fees. If the umpires are not paid at the field, the forfeiting team's organization will be billed for both umpire fees. Since Major teams are playing competitively for a league championship, Major teams may never "borrow" players from the opposing team at any time under any circumstance.
MINOR DIVISION GAMES - Since Minor teams do not play competively for a league championship, teams that are shorthanded, having less than 8 players), may "borrow" players from the opposing team to play DEFENSE only. All players will bat in their own team's continuous batting order. Should a player due to bat be playing defense for the opposing team, simply call time and replace the batter due up with another defensive player.
FORFEITED GAME SCORES - The score for a forfeited game is always 7-0 in favor of the team not forfeiting the game. The forfeiting team must take a loss. The coach of a winning 7-0 forfeited game MUST still report the game to the league as a 7-0 forfeit win. If a forfeited game is not reported to the league by the end of the season, both teams will take the loss, just as any other game that was played and not reported.
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Continuing Suspended Games at a Later Date
Once games are started and then rained out, they are never restarted from the beginning as a new game later. You MUST continue the suspended game at the point of pitch including using the same line up that was used to start the original game. If you do not have some of the players from the original game available when you continue the suspended game on another date, you MUST notify the umpire at the pre-game meeting when you pick up the game where you left off, that you are reporting substitute players for those starting players that are now not available. You should also present a line up card to the umpire that shows the original starters and the new substitutes.
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Defensive Positioning of Players
There are few restrictions as to where players may play defense on the field. The ASA rule 4.1.C.1 only states the positions of players as Pitcher (F1), Catcher (F2), 1st Baseman (F3), 2nd Baseman (F4), etc. for identifying the defensive players for scoring purposes in the scorebook. The ASA pitching rule 6.5.A states... The pitcher shall not deliver a pitch unless all defensive players are positioned in fair territory, except the catcher who must be in the catcher's box. What this means is that outfielders may play in the infield, infielders may play in the outfield, and fielders may shift from one side of the field to the other as long as the fielders do not interfere or distract the batter's line of sight to the pitcher. A coach may play a defensive alignment with five or six infielders if they choose to do so. Of course, if a coach chooses to play his/her defensive players away from the "normal" positions, they lose the opportunity to properly teach the basic fundamentals of each player covering their "normal" defensive positions.
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Use of the DP, FLEX, and ADDITIONAL Players
Fast pitch rules only require NINE offensive batting positions in the line up. If you are using the DP/FLEX option in your starting lineup, the 10th player as shown on the line up card is designated as the FLEX (defensive only player). If the FLEX player bats as a 10th batter in the batting order, she is considered an illegal batter and is subject to penalties if and when brought to the attention of the home plate umpire by the defensive team. While the 10th player is in the games as the FLEX, she can only play defense. The FLEX does not bat unless she is substituted to bat for the DP. Therefore, the FLEX player can only bat in the DP's spot in the batting order. When the Flex substitutes and bats for the DP, the team is down to nine players (the DP/FLEX positions have left the game). If the DP re-enters the game, the team may go back up to ten players and the Flex player may return to the game in that position. Coaches should alert your scorekeepers to make sure that there are only 9 "batting positions" in the batting order and that the lead off batter always follows the 9th batter in the batting order. For Major teams only, if a team is playing shorthanded with only eight players, the ninth batting spot that has no batter is always to be considered an out. Major teams can never only bat eight players without taking the out for a ninth batter.
If you are using the ADDITIONAL player option, you may insert one or two "additional" batters anywhere in the batting order. Although the ADDITIONAL player(s) are considered to be "batting only", they may play defense for any player without using up a substitution or re-entry. Using the ADDITIONAL player(s) option means that there will be 10 or 11 official batters in the starting lineup.
Whether you start the game with 9, 10, or 11 official batters in the starting lineup, you may play shorthanded down to as few as eight (8) batters, however, if there are no batters available for any of the starting 9, 10, or 11 original batters, an out will always be taken.
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Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Be A Softball Coach
From the home office in York, PA...
Here are the top 10 reasons why you should be a softball coach:
10. You get a cool shirt and cap
9. You need the exercise
8. You'll know where your kids are
7. You get a front row seat at all of the games
6. You have to drive to the ball field anyway
5. All of the hot dogs and soft pretzels you care to eat
4. Your kids love it when you participate in their activities
3. You need to sharpen your hitting skills too
2. Great way to bond with your kids
And the #1 reason why you should be a softball coach:
1. Ice cold water dumped on you after a win really feels good on a hot summer day
Thanks to all of our team managers, head coaches and assistant coaches who volunteer their time and efforts to coach youth fastpitch softball in the York County Junior Girls Softball League. Your role as team leaders and teachers of the sport are greatly appreciated.
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