Not too long ago, baseball began in the Spring. As a kid, I always looked forward to hearing the crack of the bat as it was a sure sign that Spring had arrived.
Now, youth baseball travel teams practice nearly all year. This helps players develop their skills. However, baseball will always be a Summer game. Much of the appeal of the game comes from being able to play in nice weather outdoors.
Since I will be vacationing for the next two weeks, our Warriors team will take a break until mid-February. Our next practice is an 8:00 pm batting cage session at Junior Diggins on February 18th.
After that, we'll continue our individual development, batting cage sessions and indoor workouts until mid-March. Hopefully, the weather will improve by mid-March and we can finally move outdoors for some practices. Weather permitting, we will begin scrimmaging against other teams in late March. Things will pick up more in April as we begin to play games.
Our team will begin Chicagoland Metro play in mid-April. The OYA season begins in late April. And, our first tournament is scheduled for the Memorial Day Weekend.
As soon as our team enters a tournament (and we are striving for four), I will post the information on our team's website. Our team is made up mostly 8th graders--and many events arise surrounding graduation. The OYA Pony League and our Warriors team will be idle on June 5th as most graduations in the area are scheduled for that day.
As tournament scheduling information is provided to you, PLEASE PLAN ACCORDINGLY. If you are planning a graduation party, sometimes adjusting the start time by just a few hours can make the difference between the player participating or being absent for a team event. When players miss games, the team is at greater risk of losing (or even forfeiting) games--which means a higher risk of elimination from the tournament and fewer games played for everyone.
In an effort to promote greater participation, I am investigating the possibility of having those players on our team who make their High School team eligible for play with the Warriors. This is a new approach (most likely in accordance with all OYA, Chicagoland Metro and ISHA rules) which will allow us to retain all of the players on our current roster. More on this later.
2011 Chicagoland Tournament Champions & 2011 Lombard Tournament Champions!
