Greetings All, For all of you that attended the meetings on the 23rd and 30th - 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: 1. 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 2. Communicate vision - use the "Meet the team night" to recruit volunteers, build excitement, and set expectations for league operations, rules, post season and more. 3. 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. 4. Get the Community Involved - Build vision into your community leaders, meet with them regularly 5. 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 <mailto: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 JP WA DA 5/13