Date Last Updated: Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Important Message to all players and their parents

We welcome all of your children to our basketball leagues and we are committed to providing a fun and worthwhile experience for them. In return we request the following:

1.   Commitment: Please give our league and your child’s team the commitment to regularly attend practices and games. We know other commitments may arise that will conflict with our schedule. If the numbers of such conflicts are going to be too great- we suggest that you not over-commit your child.

2.   Specific team requests: Except for our Boys and Girls 2^nd & 3^rd grade leagues, we use a player draft to select our teams. Our commitment is to create fair and balanced teams and we will not be able to honor requests to be on a specific team (whether desiring to be with a certain coach or player or for transportation purposes). In our 2^nd & 3^rd grade groups we put teams together based on schools or neighborhoods and seek to honor as many special requests as possible.

3.   Player previews: These sessions are used to give the coaches an understanding of the skill level of each player. Attendance, while never mandatory, is very important in our pursuit of fair and balanced teams. If an emergency arises and your child cannot attend, please contact Dick Butler @ Liverpooloptimists.org  (preferred) or call 652-5375. Please plan to arrive about 15 minutes before your scheduled start time. We will check your child in, assign them a number and prepare them for the preview. Each player will be previewed as part of a small group (4-6 players) for about 5-7 minutes. Each player preview session is usually totally completed in about 60 to 90 minutes. Many players will be done sooner.  

4.   Team selections: At these sessions our coaching staffs get together to select their teams. This is done by a draft procedure with the ultimate goal to be selection of teams that are balanced. All coaches have their reasons for selecting certain players but sometimes those players have already been picked by another team. While possibly disappointing to a player, please use this as an opportunity to meet and make new friends. Trading players from one team to another is not part of our selection process.

5.   Practice: Players will be notified by their coaches as soon after the team selection as possible. Practice will normally begin within a few days of the contact- so the first practice may be on rather short notice. When the coach calls, please get their name and phone number as well as the team name and confirm the date, time and location of practice. This can save all of us on phone calls and will help ensure your child gets acclimated to the team as quickly as possible. Practices will continue up until our games begin in December and then will be assigned as available. In November and December practices may be held on differing days, times and locations. Every attempt will be made to assign a regular schedule for practices throughout the season as quickly as possible. Most weeks each team will have 1 practice and 1 game.

6.   Coaches: We are fortunate to have a majority of our coaches return each season. However, we always try to welcome any newcomers to the coaching ranks. Unfortunately, in the past, we have had to limit the number of players we can register due to less coaches than needed. Thinking about it but, need to know more? Contact Dick Butler at Liverpooloptimists.org (preferred) or call 652-5375.  

The Optimist Club of Liverpool has sponsored and organized this league for nearly 30 years. Our goal continues to be to provide our many players, big and small, a chance to enjoy our principles of fair play, sportsmanship and teamwork. I hope we can all remember these simple things as games are played. As always, let’s work to let referees make their calls, let coaches work with our players to help them improve and mostly let our players play and enjoy themselves.   

Dick Butler- Optimist Basketball League Commissioner

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Dick Butler

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