All:

Real quickly I want to thank everyone that came out this past Saturday for the DSL tournament.  Despite the rain, it was a great event.  I'll send out more details on the tournament results in the end of season email.

Moving onto this week and next week.  For those that have games this week please remember to upload your game cards immediately.  I am working on the schedule for next weekend's Playoffs but I still have a few game pairings that will be decided by games played this week.  

Over the next 24 hours please review the standings on the webpage (dslpitt.org).  Things look generally correct from our end, but if you notice an error with anything on the standings, please notify us ASAP as I expect to be able to circulate playoff pairings and game times as early as tomorrow evening (depending on how quickly all of you are uploading your game cards).  

Generally speaking we will play playoff games next Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  JV 7's will play Friday (with their championship on Saturday) and all other teams that qualify will have their play in games on Saturday and championship games on Sunday.  We don't have much flexibility on game days and times so I will ask all teams that qualify to confirm that you can play once the schedule is circulated (If you are missing a few kids I wouldn't sweat it too much, this time of year all the teams lose a few to early vacations, other sporting events and other commitments in general).  

Aside from confirming your availability, the only other thing that we require each team to bring are 1) registration fee of $150 per team (one time fee, payable in cash so we can use it to offset game day expenses and you do not pay it again on day 2 if you advance) and 2) three copies of your game day rosters completely filled out with players names and numbers.  This will need to be brought again on day 2 if you advance.  I'll circulate playoff specific ones early next week.

One note on rosters, JV can have 4th graders play up and Varsity can have 5th and 6th graders play up.  If your school has multiple teams that advance in the playoffs please note that JV teams in one bracket cannot play for other JV teams and Varsity teams in one bracket cannot play for other Varsity teams.  Players that play up need to be listed on the roster and you should not have players playing up if you have 4 or 5 subs already without them playing up.  Doing so results in three things that we don't like – 1) diminished playing time for your grade appropriate players, 2) difficulties/distractions for coaches and DSL officials with an excessively large bench, and 3) the real possibility of me running out of medals for the other teams if teams decide that this is a great opportunity to squeeze everyone on the team to get a medal.    As a general rule we don't expect 7v7 teams to exceed 15 players and we don't expect varsity teams to exceed 23 players.  Please manage your bench appropriately in this regard.  And to avoid confusion, if your team has been larger than that all year long due to whatever reason, don't cut players for this game, I usually have plenty of medals in reserve for that scenario as I know what your roster sizes are.  What I am trying to avoid though is the artificial team inflation by having players play up when it isn't needed from a number perspective.

Also, and I believe every coach on this list knows this, there is no stacking any team with players who are not on your roster prior to the start of your 4th game.  If any team is found to be playing players in violation of this rule it is ground for immediate forfeiture of the match.

I don't expect any of the above to cause any issues and I look forward to another great event to cap off our season.  let me know if you have any questions and I'll be in touch soon.

Regards,

Rob