Parent Backgrounder

CNLL and Parents

CNLL is an all volunteer organization, dedicated to helping local kids play and love baseball.

Play and Love Baseball Our mission is about kids, playing a game that millions of kids have enjoyed. Through that play we learn about sportsmanship, and teamwork, and a little bit about ourselves.

Local Kids Our charter covers much of Cupertino, South of Stevens Creek Boulevard, and West of De Anza Boulevard -- the specifics and maps are available on our Boundaries page. But, we welcome any families in the area -- contact us if you are having difficulties, if necessary we may be able to file a waiver if you don't happen to be within our boundaries.

Volunteer Organization CNLL is managed, organized, staffed, and operated by volunteers from the many families that play in CNLL. The only way we can accomplish all of this for the kids is through everyone's participation -- many of the roles are small, a few of our roles are large, but it is worth some consideration that even our best coaches are just the Dad of one of our players.

Calendar

CNLL runs a Spring Baseball calendar. Basically

• December: Registration
• January: Clinics and Try Outs
• February: Drafts and Team Assignments, first practices
• March: Practices, and early games (weather willing)
• April: Most of the season
• May: End of season, CNLL tournaments
• June, maybe July: Little League District tournaments

See a past year's calendar for a basic idea: Calendar2009.

CNLL also does have a more informal "Fall Ball" season, running about August into November, often focused on those players looking a transitioning up a level in the coming Spring and those kids who just want to play more baseball.

Equipment

Players will need to have their own:

• Fielding Glove
  • Probably an infielder's glove sized for their hand
    • too big and the kids can't open and close it well enough to control the ball
  • Leather is usually a better choice, they last and they become easier to use
• Batting Helmet
  • One that is rated for use in Baseball
  • Choose one that fits the player well, goes on/off easily, doesn't fall in front of the eyes, etc.
  • Adding a facemask to the batting helmet is an easy way to make the players more confident -- and the parents worry less...

Encouraged (not necessary in TBall and maybe Farm, but most of these are needed by Minors)

• Baseball Bat
  • Kids often share during games and practices, but many want to have "theirs"
  • Bats must marked on the bat as being cleared for use in Little League
  • In general, keep the bats small and light
    • everybody seems to want a big bat, but to hit well they must be able to swing it fast and keep it under control
• Cleats
  • Something comfortable, that ties well enough to stay on the feet
  • Soccer cleats work fine
    • the difference is whether there is a spike under the tip at the toe
      • in baseball such a toe cleat can help slightly with the sprint up the basepaths
      • that toe cleat doesn't help in soccer's grass, and can increase the risk of injuring another player with a wild kick
• Athletic Supporter
  • A hard cup, protects the crotch from balls that bounce in unexpected ways
• Baseball Pants
  • Strong cotton pants with extra layers at the knees
    • regular pants are very likely to get torn once the players start sliding (Minors)
    • the team is likely to select a color to match their uniforms

The league provides:

• Uniforms
  • Shirts and hats -- parents will want to find matching socks, belts, and the baseball pants mentioned above
• The Rest of the Equipment
  • The coaches are provided with practice balls, catcher's gear, and so on.

If you have any questions about what to get, where to find it, or other concerns about equipment, bring your questions to the on-site registrations -- there will be lots of folks there who have been through all of this.

Player Involvement

The amount of activity varies with age, but most of the activity is on Saturdays and after school on weekdays. The TBall kids will mostly play on Saturdays possibly with practices one afternoon each week. The Farm kids will probably have practice on one afternoon as well as the Saturday game. The Minors will have a game on Saturday as well as a game one other afternoon plus one or more practices during the week. The Majors do the same with perhaps a few more practices. The Juniors is similar but games are played all around District 44, and the Seniors schedule is more of the same, mostly just working around the hectic High School activities.

The one warning for new parents is that weekday schedules are rarely set until the teams are formed and the coaches know what the various needs are. This can lead to some schedule conflicts with player's existing activities. Coaches sometimes can make changes, but adapting more than a dozen different schedules is almost always an exercise in frustration. If a conflict arises, let the coach know, let the player come whenever he can, but otherwise make the required priority call. Conflicts can sometimes be minimized by recognizing that baseball, like any sport, will require a notable commitment of time and energy to play and learn.

Try Outs

Try outs are how CNLL figures out how to set up all of the teams so that every player has a good season.

CNLL's tryouts not about "cutting" players, they are about building the right teams. We are committed to finding the right place for every player to have fun and to grow.

Our TBall and even our Farm teams are mostly made by keeping kids together with their schoolmates -- there are no tryouts for those ages. However, we encourage everyone 9 and up, or who has had at least one year in the Farm Division, to come to tryouts so we can see how many players are at each level -- and how many players are in those tricky in-between levels.

When you come to tryouts you will be given a number (after seeing hundreds of players in a single session, it becomes a lot easier for the coaches to write down just a number than trying to spell out everyone's name...) Then we will set up several "stations" and rotate all of the players through each of:

• get a ground ball and throw to first base
• catch a fly ball and throw into the infield
• show your speed running the basepaths
• see how well you can hit a straight pitch

and that's about it.

With dozens, if not hundreds, of kids it can take a few hours to get through everything, so things are usually best if you can clear your schedule of other commitments that morning or afternoon. Usually we set up so that the younger players and the older players are on different schedules (for example, 9-10 year olds in the morning, 11-12 year olds in the afternoon) so that we minimize the chaos and keep the bigger kids from running over the rest.

Parent Involvement

As noted above, CNLL is a volunteer organization. And we do rely on everyones' help to make it possible to spread the work and keep the requirements as light as is possible for all involved.

There are usually two separate areas of involvement: at the CNLL level, and at the individual team level.

CNLL asks the parents of each player to cover some Volunteer Position at the league level. Many of these are quite light, e.g. staff a table at registration or at Opening Day. Some of the positions are a little bit more involved, e.g. help with a tournament's organization or assist with uniform orders. And we always have room for more leaders, whether its as Equipment Coordinator, Tournament Director, Player Agent, not to mention that most visible role: Coach. The more we all do here, the better CNLL becomes.

Also, each team within CNLL will have several needs for volunteers. We are dependent upon the teams providing help to prep the fields before each game, to keep score during the games, to cover a set of shifts in the Snack Shack, to get the team's photo back to each of the families, and so on. Commonly the Coach will ask one of the parent's to help coordinate all of the teams volunteers (and probably also to keep the Coach coordinated...) The more that can be pulled off here, the happier the team will be.

Finally, there is a third level of involvement: at the kids' level. The more the parents can play with the kids, the more that everyone learns. Almost all of the teams can use the assistance of parents that can hang out and help at practices. Every team can use a loud cheering section at each of the games. And every kid can always use another opportunity to get outside again and play catch. The more that we play, the better we learn.

Thank you for all that you do.