Greetings All,

For all of you that attended the meetings on the 23^rd and 30^th – thank you VERY much – saves a great deal of time.

Some of the things that got accomplished were:

Dates for Districts
Meeting the UIC for the State of Washington and getting some Umpire clinics scheduled…
Understanding how to put together our boards better
Strategy for building the league
Strategy for getting more volunteers
Funding Sources
Commitments to interleague play more, softball more, and additional divisions…
Commitment to coaches clinics
“Meet the team night” as a way of building community, volunteers, and making Little League exciting
Combined Teams and District Teams strategies and rules.

Most who attended felt they learned something and got a few ideas that will help their leagues.

I wanted to stress a couple of things:

Focus on building the T-Ball division. The guest speaker we had outlined a great strategy for building the league from the bottom up. As a reminder, what they had done in their league was to get local businesses to sponsor and underwrite teams to the point where the cost to get a T-Baller involved was $25 – and this year they were going to try to get it down to $15. The lower the cost of entry the better. Remember the story I told about how the PGA gives away golf to kids so they learn to love the game. Do the same with T-Ball… find sponsors to the point where kids can play for the lowest cost possible and get them in T-Ball… this also helps to start building your volunteer base as well. Also remember that you want to work a “5 year plan” – by getting more parents involved at T-Ball you naturally expand your volunteer base… do it consistently every year and you will being to build volunteers into the older divisions and league functions
Communicate vision – use the “Meet the team night” to recruit volunteers, build excitement, and set expectations for league operations, rules, post season and more.
Expand your leagues by adding divisions – Little League goes up to age 17. It has softball, and the best post season cycle in youth sports. Expand who you are serving.
Get the Community Involved – Build vision into your community leaders, meet with them regularly
Select the right people for the Board – get rid of “dead wood” and get people who are excited about building something and serving the communities where you live

I am excited for the 2022 season! Lets make some things happen! And Brennan Moore wanted me to share his email address so that everyone can interleague with him…

Brennan Moore br3nnan.moore@gmail.com

also – remember – if you host someone who travels to you, be sure to do the courteous and right thing and schedule a trip to them so that one person isn’t always traveling… Lets build a good District and start to see more and more kids playing baseball!

Regards

WA DA 5/13