As many of those in Millennium Sunday Softball know, we are the largest and greatest ASA softball league the state has to offer. With that accomplishment comes a lot of responsibility to the league, it's teams, participating players, umpires and so many more. The league spends great lengths of time assessing all factors which go into daily, weekly, and seasonal plans to make a 52 team league run smoothly. Joe has conferred with Divisional Captains, Player Reps, Coaches and so many more just to make sure he and the league have made the best decision(s).
With that being said, re-aligning the divisions for this league is an amazing and daunting undertaking that took hours after this past Sunday's first league meeting at Barnaby's. With Joe on hand, the divisional captains and a few coaches were involved in determining the best divisions for the league. When we say "best," it is a reflection of the competitive balance and camaraderie that all teams can profit from. This year's re-alignment was challenging for several reasons. First, the league went from 60 teams at this time last year to currently sitting at 52, with the potential to add more in the coming weeks. With that being said, we as a league essentially lost almost an entire division of teams. Many of those teams were towards the top divisions of the league so the teams in the middle divisions and lower divisions have had to "move up." Some teams, such as Kirklyn Ducks volunteered to move up wherever needed to fulfill the best balance the league needed and to those teams, we thank them.
We've went from 12 teams in last year's A/B Division and 10 in the C Division, 22 combined, to 8 in the A Division, 8 in the B Division, and 10 in the C Division, totaling 26. That's 4 teams more in our top three divisions, allowing us to put the top talent Millennium has to offer in our top three divisions, much like years past.
2016 "A" Division:
Almost all of our teams in the newly formed A Division have players or full teams that go away to the ASA State Tournaments, some of which have placed fairly high in those tournaments. The easiest decision we could make was which teams were at the top, based off of States Participating and placement, last year's league record and playoff performance, and of course what coaches have told us when discussing this year's rosters. Some coaches informed us that they picked up immense talent while others stated they lost talent. We took that into consideration in both this division and the ones after. We feel like this division is the best of the best when it comes to Millennium Sunday Softball. And we invite any teams that if you feel you belong here, please don't shy away from competition or take offense to the above statement and join these great teams. The greatest virtue of Millennium Sunday Softball is that the talent doesn't just stop here in the "A" Division. This division has what we believe to be the greatest amount collectively which gives us an amazing top division to start our re-alignment.
"B" Division:
When completing the first leg of divisional re-alignment, we focused on where the top talent in the league stood after the first eight teams were off the board filling the "A" Division and we then had to determine the next best group of teams and players. We did consider eight teams versus ten for the "A" Division and with the "A" Division having eight teams, the need for crossover games arose, so we created another eight team division for the "B" Division. We ultimately felt that the next eight teams were well above the next tier of teams. Some teams here in the "B" Division were considered for the "A" Division, but with their stated lack of returning talent and players along with offering new teams coming into Millennium Sunday a competitive place in the league, we felt it best to stay at these eight teams for both the "A" and "B" Divisions. The proposed "B" Division has a lot of talent within its ranks, as it possesses two teams who lost talent while participating in higher divisions last Spring, a Spring Divisional Champion who according to league rules had to move up a division, four teams that competed well in last Spring's "C" Division, and a new team to Millennium Sunday competition.
A lot of thought was put into the above teams and divisions and one key factor that went into any team (in either the listed divisions or the soon to be listed divisions) was the creation of a new policy in Millennium Sunday Softball which is that teams petitioning a move down in division and placement must prove their claim of players that they have lost through restricted lists. These "restricted lists" will be asked of each team petitioning and the players on these lists will not be allowed to participate in Millennium Sunday Softball for those teams. If teams are honest with the league and with themselves, they'll know this policy is created for the fairness and benefit of all teams in mind.
Again, I ask that all teams seeing the divisions and their re-alignment understand that this task is a huge undertaking, one that we as division captains and Joe as League Commissioner put a lot of thought and consideration into. We wanted to create a fair, balanced, competitive and challenging group of divisions that offer every team not only a place to have fun and play softball, but a chance to get better, improve their level of play and compete to the best of their ability and to the best of their division's ability. We took feedback from our "break off" sessions Sunday and brought that criteria to the re-alignment meeting and I believe we all as League Captains and Joe as a Commissioner can say that these divisions are the best we could have done with such a talented, competitive group of teams.
The next group of Divisions will be released this week, once Joe has full cooperation and agreement from all teams in the "A" and "B" Divisions.
Respectfully,
Steve Prescott
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