Greeting UICs! (Umpire In Chiefs) - Its been a helluva year! 3 months ago I was doubtful we'd be having these tournaments, but things keep getting better and our local parks are opening up more and more each day! As most of you know, District 9 will be hosting the State Little League Baseball tournament this year. As this is not our regular rotation slot, I'm a little behind in getting information out to all of you on this (I'm not even sure your DAs have gotten their packets yet). The tournament will be at Hartman Park in Redmond. Opening weekend starts on 7/17 with 10 games on Saturday and 10 games on Sunday. After that, we've got 2 games a night through the week and the following weekend, with the tournament ending on 7/27. As always, please let me know if you will be sending a crew, how many, and when you would like to work. Our goal is at least 4 umpires on each game, so if you won't be sending 4 umpires, just let me know and we'll be happy to fill in with some local umpires as well. I will prioritize assignments based on when I get your reply, with those traveling the furthest getting highest priority. Some notes on Covid protocols: Even though the parks are opening up, we will probably have some restrictions still in place when the tournaments start - its not at all clear what those will be though. I do want to let everyone know that we will be following Little League's Regional/WS position and requiring all umpires for this tournament to be fully vaccinated (at least 2 weeks since your final shot). I made this decision at this point so anyone not yet vaccinated but wanting to work this tournament will have enough time to get vaccinated (5 weeks in order to get both shots for the 2 shot vaccines). With that requirement in place, our umpires will be working standard 2/3/4 umpire rotations (probably not 6, but if you send 6 we can talk!), and I'm working towards not requiring our umpires to be masked during the game (at least). We should also have an umpire camp setup without restrictions! I'm truly looking forward to seeing all of you again during this tournament! Rob Little UIC, District 9