We started registration the 3rd week of May. Seems a little strange to open registration while baseball season is just getting underway, but that way the kids can talk about it during school.
As expected, the younger grades' teams filled up quickly. Within a week, the Grade 4 team was full at 19+ signed up! There are four on the waiting list right now. The Grade 2/3 team filled up within two weeks, and the Grade 5 team filled up a few days after that.
It's tough for those on the waiting list. If we could get a "handful plus" of players, we could form another team. Also, it's difficult (but necessary) to turn away kids who do not live in the school district or the community. This year we have a couple in that situation.
And unfortunately, as expected, sign-ups have been slow for the 6th, 7th and 8th grade teams. There just seems to be something that happens at 6th grade, where they lose their enthusiasm for football. Yes, winning helps keep them motivated. But also good coaching and fun. We need to strike a balance between winning but also driving them so hard that they don't want to play.
I think a lot of these "lost players" will come back and play again at high school, but for now it's tough. Tough for those who want to play, because we're faced with tough decisions... such as do we fold the team and tell them to look elsewhere to play. Last year, we were lucky and the league allowed us to put five 6th graders on the 5th grade team. Without that, neither team would have had enough. This year those 5th graders are actually less in number than the 6th graders! But still, there are not enough at either grade.
Only three signed up so far for the 8th grade team. This has been a surprise so far, because they did pretty well last year, winning 4 games. There were 19 of them last year. Not sure why they are not signing up.
