Dear Shoreview Area Youth Baseball Families,

In a normal year, our Little League season would be over three quarters done by now and we would only be a week away from league playoffs in our Instructional, Junior Minor, and AL/NL Leagues.  Unfortunately, as we all know, this year has been anything but normal.  While we have delayed deciding the fate of our seasons as long as possible, well beyond many of Minnesota’s other baseball associations, we had to cancel our Big League season last week and today we are cancelling our 2020 Little League season as well.  This is certainly not the news we wanted to share, but a sad reality and outcome of how COVID-19 is impacting youth sports in Minnesota.

As we mentioned in our last update on June 7, 2020, in order to effectively get our Little League season up and running in a timely manner, we set a deadline of yesterday, June 15, 2020, to receive a game-start date of June 22, 2020 or earlier from the Governor.  Sadly, yesterday came and went without that news resulting in the cancellation of our Little League season.

I want to again personally thank my fellow SAYB Board Members and all of the volunteers and coaches for the thousands of hours that they put into getting SAYB ready for a 2020 season.  Without you—the lifeblood of our organization—we would have not been ready should we have received the green light to play.  I am very proud of how long our association fought to have a season.  We also want to thank all of you, the SAYB parents and families, for your patience and support throughout this process.

Thanks in advance for your patience as we process refunds.  Our goal is to get through them in the next month.  In the meantime, as always, please do not hesitate to reach out if you would like to discuss any of this further. 

We are less than three months away from September, which is when we start planning for the next baseball season.  We are looking forward to a great 2021 season for SAYB and hope to see everyone back out on the baseball diamond next year!

Sincerely,

Erik Drange

President - Shoreview Area Youth Baseball

Dear Shoreview Area Youth Baseball Community, 

As a brief update, we currently working towards starting our practices next week given the Governor’s guidance last week.  While we had hoped to start practices this week, Governor Walz’s Stay Safe Plan did not permit practices to start until on or after June 1, 2020 (https://mn.gov/covid19/for-minnesotans/stay-safe-mn/stay-safe-plan.jsp).  Last week, the Department of Health also issued its Guidance for Social Distancing in Youth Sports (https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/schools/youthsports.pdf.  If you have not been contacted by your coach yet, you should be shortly once teams are finalized.
 
Please note that while we may start practices in the next week or so, we are still waiting for guidance from Governor Walz on when we can start games and the impact that date might have on our season.
 
We will continue to keep you updated.  In the meantime, if you have questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.  Again, thank you for your continued patience and support.

Sincerely,

Erik Drange
President - Shoreview Area Youth Baseball

Dear Shoreview Area Youth Baseball Community, 

As we continue to plan for SAYB’s 2020 season in light of COVID-19, this past week provided us with further hope as Governor Walz announced that he is allowing the Stay Home Executive Order to expire tonight - replacing it with the Stay Safe MN Order.  Also, the collaboration of Minnesota’s baseball and softball organizations (MYAS/GSBL, MBL, Minnesota Softball) continued its work with a statewide youth sports task force created by the Governor and led by the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission in an effort to safely return youth baseball athletes to the diamond in 2020.

That work has included formulating a universal return-to-play scorecard that all sports would use to create guidelines specific to their sport. Those guidelines will then be evaluated by the Governor’s office and the Minnesota Department of Health as they make decisions about which sports can safely reopen and when.  We understand that the task force and statewide youth sports organizations are in the process of finalizing the scorecard and, early this week, will present it to state officials for approval. Once the scorecard is accepted, the MYAS/GSBL-MBL-Minnesota Softball Safe Play: Back to the Diamond guidelines will be modified, if necessary, and submitted for final consideration. 
 
The current proposed timeline for youth baseball includes a May 26 start date for practices and mid-June start date for games.  While this is, of course, subject to change, SAYB is working towards these dates—including finalizing rosters and scheduling practices, games, and tournaments.  As we get closer to our season’s start, we wanted to ask/note a couple of things—
 
First, SAYB has crafted its own return-to-play guidelines leveraging the MYAS/GSBL-MBL-Minnesota Softball "Safe Play: Back to the Diamond" guidelines and the benchmarking we have done with other associations.  As the baseball-specific guidelines are approved at the state level, we will also update ours as appropriate.  We have provided a link to the "Safe Play: Back to the Diamond" guidelines on the www.sayb.org website and will provide updated versions, as well as SAYB’s, when they are available.
 
Second, as we are in the process of finalizing rosters and schedules, we ask that should your child not plan on playing this year due to COVID-19 to please let us know by May 21, 2020.  We certainly respect each family’s decision and, as such, will provide full refunds (minus any transaction charges SAYB has incurred either in the original registration or via the electronic refund process). 
 
To submit a refund request, please send email to reg.sayb@gmail.com with the following information including “Refund Request” in the subject line and the following in the message body:
 

• Player’s name
• Parent’s name
• Mailing address for refund
• League the player was registered in (e.g., “Instructional League”)
• Reason for the request (“COVID-19”)

 
Third, because we want to be completely transparent with our families, we want to let you know that as we gear up for the season, we will be asking families to sign an updated wavier/consent form that specifically references COVID-19 before returning to play.  We will provide a link on the www.sayb.org website when that is available.
 
If you have questions about any of the above, please do not hesitate to reach out.  In the meantime, we will continue to keep you updated.  Again, thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Erik Drange
President - Shoreview Area Youth Baseball

This year, SAYB will not be including pants as part of the uniform.  Therefore, parents will be responsible for obtaining pants for their child.  The pants must be solid grey and can either be long (full length) or short (knee length with elastic).  The provided uniform will include a jersey, hat, socks, and belt.

For your convenience, SAYB has been able to secure lower prices from the following local stores, but there is no requirement that parents purchase pants from these stores:

Athletic Outfitters

BSN Team Sports

Also, SAYB has an inventory of pants from prior years and will offer these up, free of charge, on a first-come, first-served basis on the following date (additional dates might be provided and, if so, will be listed on www.sayb.org):

Please note that each player is limited to one pair of these pants and SAYB cannot guarantee that your child will get pants or that pants in their size will be available.

New Bat Requirements

POSTPONED - Little League Coaches' Meeting (previously scheduled for April 4, 2020), Shoreview Community Center

POSTPONED - Umprie Training (previously scheduled for April 4, 2020), Shoreview Community Center

CANCELLED - Little League Photo Day, Chippewa Middle School

CANCELLED - Pitch, Hit and Run, Chippewa Middle School

CANCELLED - Big League Photo Day, Chippewa Middle School

CANCELLED - SAYB Twins Night (versus LA Angels), 7:10 p.m., Target Field