February 13, 2024

Hello,

As we've had a couple days of Spring like weather, we can't help but get excited about the upcoming season.  As we have opened registration, we have gotten a few questions from parents we wanted to cover for everyone.  But first, a reminder that registration ends 2/23/2024 at midnight.  We will not be registering anyone after that time due to assessments being held on 2/24 at the Gorham Sports Complex.  More on that below:

Assessments: 
These will be held from 10am-2pm on Saturday, February 24 at the Gorham Sports Complex located at 215 Narragansett St in Gorham.  Softball will be held 10am-12pm and baseball 12pm-2pm.  If you are attending assessments, you will need to fill out a waiver when signing your child up.  If you cannot make assessments, we will have a baseball makeup on 2/28 from 6-8pm at Shaw Gym and a softball makeup on 2/29 from 6-8pm also at Shaw Gym.  You will need your child to have a batting helmet, bat and glove.  They can wear sneakers or plastic molded cleats, but absolutely no metal cleats.  

Board Position:
We are currently looking for a new board member to help us start up our concessions program with the beautiful new facility located at Little Falls.  If you've ever been in food service or intrigued by the idea of helping us start a new business, this might be for you.  It will involve helping us choose a product mix, pricing, set up a volunteer staffing program and choose and implement a credit card payment program.  This will be a full board voting position.  Please email [email protected] if you want to chat about it.

Frequently Asked Questions:
So we have gotten a few common questions that we figured we can answer here and hopefully it will help everyone out.  First of all, ages for little league.  These ages are not set by our local little league, and they offer no wiggle room.  You can calculate your child's age at https://www.littleleague.org/play-little-league/determine-league-age/ and if your child falls between age 8-12, they can play in our league in 2024.  For baseball, we will be offering Junior Little League registration at a slightly later date, and that is offered for league age 13/14.  There is no wiggle room for us allowing 7 year olds or 13 year olds to play in minors or majors Little League as determined by the official Little League calendar.

For equipment for this season, your child will need a batting helmet, a bat certified for use in Little League, a glove and shoes appropriate for Little League play.  For softball we highly recommend a face mask for all minors players and infielders at the majors level.

Games and practices are played on weeknights.  The exact schedule will be determined at a later date as coaches are chosen, fields are scheduled and kids are drafted to teams.  We will followup with more information on that at a later date.

Umpire Clinic
One of the rarest and most valuable commodity in youth sports right now is a qualified official.  We will be begging for volunteers to help umpire games for us in 2024, and as part of that we are again offering to pay the registration for anyone who is willing to attend the Maine State Umpires clinic on March 23 at Windham High School.  It runs from 8am-3pm and is suitable for our teen umps (who earn volunteer hours and gift cards) all the way up to adults.  If you wish to attend, please fill out the Umpire Registration form on GYBSA.com and we will followup with you.

Thanks for your time, please email with any questions/concerns, 

Greg Norton
President, GYBSA
[email protected]
(207)232-2922


January 12, 2024

Hello,

Welcome to our first entry in the President's Blog.  We want to use this space to keep you updated on what is happening at GYBSA/Gorham Little League.  As I enter my first offseason as President of GYBSA, I want to first thank all our our participants/parents/coaches/umpires/board members for a great 2023 season, both in the Spring and Fall seasons.  Before I turn to the future, I want to thank our outgoing President, Josh Brenner, for his tireless work during his years on the board and as President.  He has left this league in a better condition than he found it, and that's all we can hope for as stewards of this organization.  


All Stars
First I want to let you know we have made some changes to our constitution at GYBSA in how we will handle All Star team selections.  These rules have been entered in to our bylaws and the 2024 season will be the first time they will be put in to practice.  Here is how the process is described in that document: 

2. All Star Team Selection.
a) Selection to an All Star team is a privilege
b) All Star pool will be gathered via a request to parents to submit their child for eligibility
c) Deadlines for submitting for eligibility are not negotiable, and will not be allowed after stated deadline
d) Exceptions to this will be if there are not enough numbers to field an all-star team – these will go through board
votes for exceptions.
e) All Star Selections will be voted on by an All Star Committee consisting of no less than two members (of the
coaching and board member classification).
f) If All Star Pool exceeds roster limits, an assessment will be held and administered by the All Star Committee
g) All Star head coaches will be recommended by the All Star Committee and voted on by the full Board of Directors
from a pool of volunteers

This features a couple of significant changes to how we have handled All Star selection in the past for both Softball and Baseball.  The first being every player that wants to participate in All Stars must attend an assessment.  This assessment will be handled by no less than two officials on a committee (hopefully many more, all coaches and board members will be invited to be on the committee).  This committee will rank players and those rankings will choose our All Star teams.  After the All Star team is chosen, the board will choose who will be the All Star coach based on nominations.  We fully believe this is a much more transparent and equitable process than we have had in the past.  We understand there is no perfect way to handle this process, but we fully expect this will be a step in the right direction.

Lights at Little Falls
We were excited to be given the opportunity to speak in front of Gorham Town Council this Fall in support of lights being installed at the baseball field at Little Falls Recreation Area.  This project uses ARPA funds, which were part of the Federal Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, meaning these lights will be installed without using local tax dollars.  We are hopeful the lights will be in play for the 2024 season and are doing whatever we can to help the Town of Gorham move this process towards completion.  The immediate benefit to our league is it doubles our usage time at Little Falls, in effect giving us another field to use for practices and games.  It also opens up the ability to host all star tournaments bringing people and revenue to the Town of Gorham.

New Board Members/Departing Board Members
This Fall we said goodbye to some wonderful volunteer board members and welcomed new members in their stead.  Departing our board were the following dedicated volunteers that we thank for their service:

President: Josh Brenner
Vice President - Baseball: Mike McDonald
Player's Agent - Softball: Ashley Woodcock

We welcome the following new board members:
President (Moving from Information Officer): Greg Norton
Vice President - Baseball (Moving From Player Agent): Dan Levesque
Player Agent - Baseball (Moving from Fundraising): Victoria Pickreign
Player Agent - Softball: Kelsey Crowe
Information Officer - Baseball: Joel Shaw
Umpire Coordinator - Baseball: Colin Loveless 


Thanks for your time, please email with any questions/concerns, 

Greg Norton
President, GYBSA
[email protected]
(207)232-2922