“Sadly, we were unable to get the chance”.

… Mayor Hamilton joined elected officials from Monroe County and Ellettsville to affirm their continued coordination in maintaining current public health guidelines through May 15.

So with said order comes the harsh reality that we unfortunately won’t be able to provide you and our community baseball this Spring / Summer.  While we truly understood that we might of had lofty goals, it doesn’t make it any easier to accept this final outcome.

While I am certain that this news is disappointing to many, I am hopeful that we can come back strong in late summer / fall to provide you a unique baseball experience that will hopefully fulfill this lost time.

For those that might be interested in how we got to said final decision, here are just a few key points…

• The City (Parks and Recreation) has tentatively decided that the earliest possible start day for play at all outdoors sports facilities is July 4^th.  Disappointingly bucketing our program in the same matter that say a sports complex like Twin Lakes is.

• The City (Parks and Recreation) decided to convert one of our two fields (Field 5 – Blue Field) into a multi-function field (removed pitcher’s mound etc.) and rented it out full time to an adult soccer league leaving us less time slots for events.

• We now share our one field with USSSA travel program (and South High School) which again limits our time slots available for events.

• We would lose one week in July to an ASA (Softball) Tournament.

• Unlike our sister youth organization (BJLBA) you might be accustomed to, we face the challenge in timing as it pertains to high school sports (like football etc.) so our program and associated schedule have to be generally high school sports friendly. (so we can’t “easily” go into late July or August for example)

• And lastly, we told ourselves that we wouldn’t take your hard earned money unless we could provide you a quality program that would consist of at least 10 games, a tournament and associated practices.

So as you can might imagine on a “good year” we have our fair share of challenges to overcome and unfortunately the unique challenges in 2020 were just too much.  So on behalf of the officers, we want to thank everyone that reached out, registered and generally provided support while we charted our possible return.  So what are our next steps?

• We will release everyone from the wait-list to officially signify our cancellation and your removal from our registration system.

• For those early registrations that have previously paid, we will begin processing refunds this week.

• With the assumption that the City will be open at some point, the officers will take this time to discuss the opportunity to provide a unique program between the months of August – October. More details to come.

So at this time, I will officially put a close to our Season Status responses with the hope that these touch bases have been helpful and have given you a better appreciate of our league and at least given you an insight to are many moving parts.  Thank you again for all the positive input and thoughts and I truly hope to see you all sometime in the near future.  Until then take care of yourself, your family and our community.

Kyle McAninch
President MCSLBA
president@mcslba.org

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