Great New Improvements and Changes to Your League!
The GYBA Officers and Board of Directors have made some changes to your league. We hope they will provide for a more enjoyable baseball experience.
The following are some of the improvements and changes:
- We are going to offer more coaching and player clinics throughout the year to develop the coaches and the kids.
- We are moving up the season start by a few weeks to allow for completion before Mother’s Day weekend, May 10th. (Pending Weather)
- We are changing the All-Star selection process. The new process will allow for all players nominated to attend to a two practice tryout after EOS tournament. All-Star Head Coaches, their Asst. Coaches, and the Commissioners will pick players based on the results of these two practices and their knowledge of the player throughout the season.
- This season we are transitioning to a new uniform composed of a digi-camo, or solid print w/digi-camo accents. We will have a universal hat. The hat will be grey with a black bill, and the embroidered "G" will be in the team's uniform color. We will have two color types of uniforms. Due to color limitations and the number of teams we field, half of the teams in the league will be in the digi-camo and the other half will be in the solid print with digi-accent. The following are the examples of the uniforms we will be wearing. (Click Here For Example 1) (Click Here for Example 2) The new uniforms will allow for parents to have their players uniform earlier and coaches are encouraged to go with a black belt and socks to reduce the need to buy new gear each season. Coaches will choose their team uniform at the draft and pick their team names.
- Coaches will be able to pick their own team names as long as they are approved by the Commissioner. Nothing tacky! The names will be drawn in the same order as in the past. Reverse order of the draft board at draft night.
- We approved more protections in the 8U NL and the 10U NL (5 pending # of coaches).
- Uniform numbers now correspond to a current or retired major league player who was Hall of Fame or currently considered a great player. No more 1-11. There will be 12 different numbers (3, 5, 7, 8, 14, 19, 20, 21, 24, 27, 29, and 44). Coaches will be provided a brief summary of their playing accomplishments and expected to make the kids learn about their number/player.
- Our 14U program has been currently shelved due to lack of participation. Our 12U recreational program is potentially in its final season due to decreasing levels of participation. We are converting those 11U, 12U, and 13U leagues to a select level league. This league is being run by Randy Floyd, GYBA President.
- In our kid pitch leagues we are going to more restrictive pitch count that accounts for # of pitches and/or outs. We are trying to make sure we are protect the kids arms and require the coaches to pitch all the kids on the team. We have adopted a model recommended by the American Medicine Sports Institute, the foremost leader in protecting arms. Pitch counts will be kept by both coaching staffs and submitted to the umpires at the end of each game, the scorecards will be returned to concessions after each game for recording.
- Our 10U AL division will be pitching from 43' as a test market this Spring 2015 season. The idea behind this concept is to allow for those players coming out of 8U an opportunity to develop confidence pitching at the 43' mark. Although 3' does not seem to be much, it is a huge distance for kids at that age and their pitching confidence. The hope is that this will increase the quality of the baseball in 10U AL. If you have sat through those game, the excitement and scoring that happened in 6U and 8U falls off real quick and it can become a walk-fest.
- And finally, we will be test marketing a few concepts in the 6U NL and the 8U NL. In the 6U NL we are going to have a weekend game, at some point to be determined, be a coach pitch game like 8U AL. They will be provided 3 coach pitches, then two off a tee if they don’t hit the ball if they are unsuccessful with the coach pitch. In 8U NL we are going to let the kids pitch for one weekend game. These will be towards the end of the season so coaches can practice live hitting and pitching the week or so before. Other leagues around the country have this as an option full-time and we are simply wanting to see if this is a viable option for our league at some point in the future.
