Umpiring Organizations

[burpee]

The newly elected President of our town Rec league has made it his priority to cut league ties with ASA and to find some other ruling body. Our league has been formally affiliated with the ASA for about 20 years. This is documented in our league bylaws. He wants to remove any mention of ASA from our bylaws, and he is inviting several other umpiring organizations to our next meeting to give presentations.

I have been involved in fastpitch softball with my daughter for several years at the rec and travel ball level. Here in New England, it is my perception that ASA is by far the most prevalent umpiring organization, with NSA a distant second. I have never heard of a local USSSA fastpitch tourney, but that could just be my ignorance. We have a local boys Babe Ruth baseball league, but no softball.

Without getting into the politics and possible motivations behind such an action, I am interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions of ASA, NSA, USSSA, and Babe Ruth.

Why on earth would we want to bring in Babe Ruth to umpire our rec league (for example) when the travel ball circuit is primarily ASA?

 

[Comp]

I dont know about other parts of the country, but here there is essentially one large umpire pool that works all of the various associations. There are a few who choose to work only high school and dont do any club ball, and there are also a few who tend to stick with one organization but for the most part you will see the same umpires at any of the associations tournaments.

As for training of umpires, again I am speaking locally, ASA is essentially the only organization that has any set umpire training in place. Recently some of the other organizations have started to hold an occasionaly clinic but ASA is the only one who actually seems to provide any training.

 

[MTR]

The newly elected President of our town Rec league has made it his priority to cut league ties with ASA and to find some other ruling body. Our league has been formally affiliated with the ASA for about 20 years. This is documented in our league bylaws. He wants to remove any mention of ASA from our bylaws, and he is inviting several other umpiring organizations to our next meeting to give presentations.

I have been involved in fastpitch softball with my daughter for several years at the rec and travel ball level. Here in New England, it is my perception that ASA is by far the most prevalent umpiring organization, with NSA a distant second. I have never heard of a local USSSA fastpitch tourney, but that could just be my ignorance. We have a local boys Babe Ruth baseball league, but no softball.

Without getting into the politics and possible motivations behind such an action, I am interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions of ASA, NSA, USSSA, and Babe Ruth.

Why on earth would we want to bring in Babe Ruth to umpire our rec league (for example) when the travel ball circuit is primarily ASA?

ASA is NOT an umpire organization. For that matter, the umpires have the least amount of say in the operations of ASA than any other entity.

It sounds as if someone has an agenda, but you find that everywhere. That agenda will probably appear once your by-laws are changed, but I think your organization as a whole, not just one person, needs to review their priorities including what you want to provide for the players, what you expect the players to get out of the league (moving on to bigger/higher levels) and the cost and effort incurred along the way.

ASA is a good fit for some, not others. However, before going off changing your by-laws, I would insist on a separate committee to raise the appropriate questions and find the answer before doing anything.

 

[David Carter]

As Comp said the umpires themselves won't change much since the same ones are umping almost every organization in the area, unless you have huge organizations with the ability to satisfy their umpiring needs internally or strictly uses volunteers ( I think LL still has this as a nation wide policy)

The first thing I would do is go to the board meeting (hopefully yours are open) and find out exactly what the underlying rationale is... the obvious reason is either a personality conflict or a reaction to an incident that has recently happen. Then ask several questions are there other organization you can affiliate with that will give you the same opportunities to play, depending on the size of you town/area there might not be a whole lot of options...what general area are you from? What level of competition do those other organizations offer?

Think this one needs a lot more information before anyone can make sense of exactly what is going on...umpiring sounds like the least of your worries at this point.

 

[FPump]

Dave,
Sent you a PM.