Little League game schedule and umpires

[phillycheese]

I need some opinions here. I joined my local board, been coaching and umpiring a few years. Our game schedule is always a mess. I brought a proposal that we set each divisions games on the same days(as much as possible) each week. For example, major boys play Tues and Sat, minor boys wed and sat, major girls mon and fri/sat, etc. The schedule works as far as number of fields go and time slots, etc. I think it would be easier to find and maintain umpires, because the ones who would do major boys, lets say, know there are games on tues and sat. As it sits now, the games are all over the calendar, and change from week to week. As far as umps, some nights we'd have 3 guys show up for 1 game, other nights one guy show up for 3 games. The simple solution is a dedicated uic who has enough umpires and schedules them to fit whatever game schedule exists. But, we've had three different uic's in three years, and the coaches usually end up doing most of the umpiring. Thats why they write the schedule so crazy, so that coaches are available to do games in their own division(which creates its own inherent problems) Our board president doesn't want to lock in 3 games from the same division on the same night, and not have umpires show.
I tried to paint a picture as short as possible, we do have a lack of umpires, and I'm considering giving up coaching(even though this year I will have my two boys on the same team) to take the Umpire in chief job. But schedule wise, which makes more sense, Having all 6 teams from the same division play the same night, or have them on three different nights?
(p.s. Its all twelve and under ball- no big league here in this small town)
Thanks for any advice.
Phil from Sequim

[bluezebra]

You have the right idea. To me, it's the onbly sensible way to schedule. All the leagues I've been affiliated with work that way. Unless there are enough fields for each division to play on the same night, playing each division on different nights makes scheduling easier.

Bob

[Rich Ives]

Good on the surface but not in reality.

I do our schedule and there are a bunch of "rules" that we need to follow. You either plan for these desires and events ahead of time or you end up with a lot of work-arounds and/or rescheduled games when the events hit.

We have majors BB & SB, minors BB & SB, coach pitch, and Tee-Ball.

No consecutive days for leagues with kid-pitch.

Team with concesson coverage has one of the fields right next to the stand.

Can't schedule majors on the 5th or 6th grade field trip days (Total of 3).

Can't schedule minors on 4th grade trip days (2).

Can't schedule majors or minors on concert nights (4).

No majors or BB minors games on field 4 when there is a Tee-Ball game on Field 5. (Foul fly balls up 1B line go into the Tee Ball field).

No games on the local "Festival" Saturday.

No Softball on field 1.

No games Memorial Day.

No Sunday games.

Leave gaps for make-up games.

Whatever special concern may come up for any given year.

Probably a few I can't think of at the moment.

Other than that, a standard schedule is just fine . . . .

[PeteBooth]

Originally posted by phillycheese

I need some opinions here. I joined my local board, been coaching and umpiring a few years. Our game schedule is always a mess. I brought a proposal that we set each divisions games on the same days(as much as possible) each week. For example, major boys play Tues and Sat, minor boys wed and sat, major girls mon and fri/sat, etc. The schedule works as far as number of fields go and time slots, etc. I think it would be easier to find and maintain umpires, because the ones who would do major boys, lets say, know there are games on tues and sat. As it sits now, the games are all over the calendar, and change from week to week. As far as umps, some nights we'd have 3 guys show up for 1 game, other nights one guy show up for 3 games. The simple solution is a dedicated uic who has enough umpires and schedules them to fit whatever game schedule exists. But, we've had three different uic's in three years, and the coaches usually end up doing most of the umpiring. Thats why they write the schedule so crazy, so that coaches are available to do games in their own division(which creates its own inherent problems) Our board president doesn't want to lock in 3 games from the same division on the same night, and not have umpires show.
I tried to paint a picture as short as possible, we do have a lack of umpires, and I'm considering giving up coaching(even though this year I will have my two boys on the same team) to take the Umpire in chief job. But schedule wise, which makes more sense, Having all 6 teams from the same division play the same night, or have them on three different nights?
(p.s. Its all twelve and under ball- no big league here in this small town)
Thanks for any advice.
Phil from Sequim

Phil in future, please separate your thoughts into more paragraphs as it makes for easier reading.

I used to schedule Umpires for my local LL (I did it for 4 yrs.) Here's what worked for me.

As Rich pointed out it's difficult to schedule games as you suggest, but there should at least be a solid 2 week schedule prepared. I would schedule umpires in a 2 week block each time.

As long as I knew the number of scheduled games each day, I couldn't care less whether they were Majors / Minors softball etc. I got a list from the umpire pool of when everyone was available and would schedule accordingly.

Example; Let's say Joe's work schedule allows him to give me Monday/ Thursday Evenings and a Saturday Morning game. I would then proceed to pencil his name in on each of those days, until further notifyed. I would do the same for all umpires.

In my association, we had both a Senior Boys Baseball program and a Senior Girls Softball Program (both interleague) as well, so that made it a bit more difficult, because I needed my best men / women covering those type games, but you do not have that problem because you only go up to age 12 at this point.

Summary: I would recommend to the BOD, that at a bare minimum the game schedules should be prepared in blocks of 2 weeks, so that you or whomever is the UIC has ample time to schedule umpires.

You have to have some form of discipline when scheduling games no matter what approach you take.

Pete Booth

[DJ Wickham]

You may also want to consider in scheduling games how to make sure that major's managers and coaches can umpire minor's games, and vice versa. You generally will need to leave additional time between the end of one division's game and the start of the next division so that they do it. The major's coaches find it a great way to scout minor's players for the future. It is a great way to get additional umpires.

[phillycheese]

Thanks for all the input everyone. It was late night when I posted, so I had trouble just forming sentences.
One of the primary reasons I proposed that the divisions play on the same night(we do have enough fields) was to free up coaches to umpire other divisions games. But I can see that if you are scheduling umpires, as long as you have the schedule, its not a problem. For the last few years, we just haven't had the umps, or a qualified uic to handle the job. Invariably, someone would try to put out a schedule with coaches responsible for games. The only trouble was, since the game schedule was the complete opposite of standardized, a coach would end up scheduled to umpire and coach at the same time. The game schedule has been such a mess that it would take hours to proofread and find errors, and then try and correlate another schedule to it.(i.e. concessions or umpires)
I can see that the solution though is to find enough umps that are not coaching. I found a Jim Porter article on recruiting and retaining umpires, so I will start with that, whether I am the uic or not.
Thanks again everyone.
Phil