We discussed a variety of topics at our league meeting on August 21st with the majority of time being spent on the topics of referee safety and parent behavior as well as the league calendar for the upcoming season. All coordinators will be sent a survey on August 22nd asking important questions about gym availability for a few key weekends. We need a point person from each organization to fill out the survey no later than August 29th so we can finalize the league calendar for the 2019-20 season.

League games will tentatively be played on the following weekends, but this will be finalized after we analyze the results of the survey.  Many options were discussed but the majority of attendees 1) did not want to play the tournament on March 8th and 2) cannot host league games on December 21.

1. December 7, 14
2. January 4, 11, 18, 25
3. February 1, 8, 15, 22 (week 10 of 2nd-6th regular season and 7th-12th tournament)
4. February 29  (3rd-6th tournament)

Other items discussed:

1. When filling out gym availability for facilities with multiple gyms, if each gym/court has the same available hours, you can check a box to indicate this and only fill out the availability form for one of the gyms and it will be copied to the other gyms in the facility.
2. When filling out a player waiver, all parties involved will be notified via email.  A reminder that the league also needs to approve all player waivers.
3. We will be inviting teams from the Dayton Metro and GCCYS leagues to the Preseason Shootout this year.  The Shootout will take place on November 9th and 10th.
4. Individual teams will now be able to register and pay on-line for the Preseason Shootout.  Most teams are registered in bulk by their organization as the organization pays the $50 registration fee.  However, some organizations have their individual teams pay so this new functionality should help that process out quite a bit.
5. We will be hosting a Coaches Clinic in October and possibly a Parent Clinic(s).  More to come on that.
6. Ben met with state officials to discuss pending legislation that is meant to better protect referees.  This serious problem continues to worsen.
7. A reminder that the referee fee was raised to $30/referee this season as voted on and approved in our March meeting.
8. If you will be registering 7th-12th grade teams, make sure you provide Sunday gym time as we will be scheduling as many of those games on Sundays to help with the growing referee shortage issue.

Please read the following information from the Ohio Department of Health regarding Lindsay's Law which addresses Sudden Cardiac Arrest in youth athletes.  The law went into effect on August 1, 2017.  CPYBL sent an email to all of our member organizations in August to provide guidance regarding how this should be implemented for our member coaches, athletes, and parents.  You can read more about Lindsay's Law on the Ohio Department of Health web site:   READ ABOUT LINDSAY'S LAW 

We have included links to resources below which might be helpful for our members, but please note that it is the obligation of your organization to make sure everyone for their program is trained and in compliance with the Ohio state law.

The following resources were developed to implement Lindsay’s Law:

For parents/guardians and youth athletes:

• Required video
• Required SCA Informational Handout
• Required Signature Form

For coaches:

If you are a coach for an interscholastic sport and are licensed by the Ohio Department of Education, please visit their website for information about their training requirements around Lindsay’s Law.

If you are a coach in a community program, please use the following resources:

• Required video
• Required SCA Informational Handout

The post-season tournament schedule is now available for all tournaments.  You can access the schedule using the buttons below or there is a Tournament option on the Schedule menu with the same options to all of the tournament information.  Please note that all brackets, seeds, and schedules are final.  Follow us on Twitter (@cpybl) as we will be tweeting tournament updates as well as all bracket champions and runners up.

Find My Bracket Physical Bracket Schedule by Bracket  Schedule by Gym 

TOURNEY INFO

1. This is a single elimination tournament
2. 1st and 2nd place teams will receive individual player medals
3. Teams were assigned to brackets and seeded based on regular season record at 2/4 at 8am (for the 7th-12th grade tournament) and 2/11 at 8am (for the 3rd-6th grade tournament). The main factor in seeding is record, but we also use point differential, head-to-head (if applicable), and a strength of schedule calculation to help. Also please note that team records have changed since we seeded teams based on scores that were reported after the seeding.  Nothing we can do about that.  This is a 1300 team tournament and we have to get started at some point.  Also, please note that we do not take into account forfeit wins or losses when seeding teams.
4. Teams are not necessarily playing in the same bracket they did during the regular season.  Athletic divisions were split across more brackets than existed during the regular season.  Low-performing high-rec teams may have been moved down to rec brackets and visa versa.  In other words, we did the best we could to place teams into brackets where they could be competitive.  Recreational teams are combined into a large city-wide pool and then split into brackets based on record so if you are 1-8, chances are, most of the teams in your tournament bracket have a similar record.
5. We are a big league and that means that teams will be traveling all over the city for the tournament.  Athletic and high-rec teams are used to this during the regular season, but in order to make the most competitive and balanced tournament possible for recreational teams, this means travel.  We hope the amount of travel is offset by a lot of very competitive and exciting tournament games for recreational teams that have had varied levels of success during the regular season.

TOURNAMENT GAME HOSTS

1. Admission is the same as during regular season
2. Admission may be charged once per day per person per site
3. You must provide a clock operator and gym supervisor
4. Please have someone available to hand out medals after championship games
5. Medals must be picked up the week of the tournament.  Time and location TBD.  All tournament hosts will be emailed this information in the next few days.

COACHES

1. Please behave in a manner becoming of a youth leader
2. Teams are responsible for paying referees the same as during the regular season
3. Any use of non-rostered players will result in your team's dismissal from the tournament.  Please verify your on-line roster is correct.  No excuses.  This should have been completed in early December.
4. Please adhere to playing time requirements.  Teams found to be in violation of the requirement, will be dismissed from the tournament.  Please follow protocol as laid out in the Rules document to report playing time issues to the league.  Protests will not be heard if protocol is not followed.
5. Winning coach should report game score immediately following game
6. Coaches and parents that approach referees after the game (for any reason) will be subject to discipline per our rules document that will be applied next season.  DON'T DO IT!  Many coaches, players, and parents are under the impression (based on emails we receive throughout the season), that we don't hold referees accountable for their actions.  Please know that we regularly review referee performance and have suspended and even removed referees from the league during the regular season.  Everyone is responsible for their own behavior.
7. If you coach multiple teams, you will need to have your assistants help you during the tournament.  This is something we have stated to your coordinators from day one this season.  We are simply not able to work around multiple team conflicts like we were during the regular season as the tournament is crunched into such a small period of time with many inter-dependencies.

FANS

1. This is youth basketball, please behave in an appropriate manner.  We have had a large increase in issues this year with fan behavior.
2. Cheer on your kids and be respectful of coaches and referees.
3. Fans that violate codes of conduct during the tournament will be subject to penalties at the start of next season!

Please note that all coaches will receive an email during their game with a link to the score reporting form (assuming we have a valid email address for them on the web site and your email provider is not blocking our emails). The winning coach should log the game score as soon as possible after the completion of their game. Some tournament sites may offer to log the score for coaches which is nice.  When a game score is submitted, it will auto-advance the winning team on the bracket/schedule.  Please pay close attention as to who is the home and away team on the score reporting form. Champions and runners-up in each bracket will receive medals which gym supervisors will hand out at the end of the championship game. Please note that these are for players only!  10 medals will be available per team.  If you have more than 10 players, please contact the league and we will get them to you the following week.

Now that winter is upon us, please read the following information regarding how gym closures will be determined and how they will be communicated to coaches, players, and their families. In regards to this weekend specifically, the forecast is varies greatly over different areas in our league. As always, please be careful and allow extra time to get to your games.

Coordinators, if you plan on cancelling games at your facility, we ask that you do so at least 90 minutes before tip-off (if possible) to give everyone (players, parents, coaches, and referees) adequate lead time. You can cancel games at your gyms by emailing, text messaging or calling Doug or Ben if you would like the league to cancel the game. Games at third party locations such as SportsPlus, would be cancelled by that third party location who in turn notifies the league. If you have games scheduled at SportsPlus, please note that they do not often shutdown their facility.

The first important piece of information to remember is that our member organizations make the decisions regarding whether or not games will be played at their gymnasiums. This is not a league decision, it is a member organization decision with the exception of some very rare cases (think blizzard) which we hopefully won't have this year! We have provided tools to organization coordinators as well as to coaches, players, and their families to help speed up the decision making and notification process so that everyone can be made aware of a game postponement as early as possible and can plan the rest of their day and not find out a game is being cancelled while they are driving to the game. Please note that the term "postponed" indicates that the game will not be played at the current time and location listed for that game but that it may be rescheduled for a future date. If a game is marked as "cancelled", that indicates that the game will not be played and will not be rescheduled.

As a coach or family member of a player, you can find out about a game postponement or cancellation in the following ways:

1. Create an account on our web site and subscribe to game status change notifications. An account can be created by clicking on the Register link above our logo. When registering for an account, you can choose to subscribe to a team or teams and also choose to receive certain types of notifications about that team. When a game is postponed, cancelled, or the location or time of the game is changed, you will receive either a text message or an email based on your settings. Text messages are almost instantaneous after the change has been made while emails can lag a bit depending on your service provider. If you signup for a text message notification, make sure you include your cell phone number (include area code) when filling out your account information
2. Go to our web site. When a gym is closed for the entire day, a message will appear on the front page of the web site indicating that the gym is closed. If you are scheduled to play a game at that gym that day, you will then know that the game has been postponed
3. Follow us on Twitter @cpybl . If we can keep up with them, we will tweet out individual gym closings AND would certainly tweet if all games are cancelled across the league due to inclement weather.
4. Look at your team schedule on our web site.. If an organization closes a gym for an entire day via our web site, this will automatically set the status of all games scheduled at that gym to "postponed". If only a handful of games are postponed on a given day, then your schedule won't be updated in real time but might lag a few hours as we manually update game statuses.