First of all, I want to thank Todd Arkley of West Coast Kickball and Larry Betz of Little Rock Kickball for all their help and advice in regards to running a non-profit kickball league. Thanks to them, Im way ahead of the curve. Im currently in the process of re-purposing some documents (liability waivers, rules, etc) that Larry gave me. Once these documents are put together, Ill release this Captains Packet on the site as a PDF.

I recieved the Reservation Request from D.C. Parks and Recreation. Once I hand over the check (ouch!), we will have the fields reserved for our use from the beginning of May to the end of August, Mondays and Wednesdays from 6pm-8pm. For those of you who have had experience squatting on the Mall for space, having permits for a field as large as this one is awesome.

Ill be spending this weekend beefing up the site and working on the registration form. As always, please email me (or leave comments) with any suggestions.

Sections

1. Welcome
2. Sign Up
3. Manifesto

1. Welcome

DCKickball will be playing kickball this Spring/Summer on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6-8pm at Walter Pierce Park. Early games will start at 6:30pm and late games will start at 7:15pm. Games will last for 5 innings or 45 minutes, whichever comes first. Teams will play one game a week, either on Monday or Wednesday according to the final schedule.

DCKickball is not associated with WAKA, and has no affiliation with the WAKA Adams Morgan kickball division. For information, please email me, Carter Rabasa, at carter.rabasa@gmail.com.

2. Sign Up

DCKickball is getting ready to start-up registration for the 2005 Spring/Summer season! Please send me an email (carter.rabasa@gmail.com) and I will add your name to the DCKickball mailing list. Please include the following information in your email:

• name
• email address
• phone number
• Do you have interest in starting or joining a team?
• If you want to start a team, how many people can you pull together?

3. DCKickball Manifesto

What would the perfect kickball league be like, if you were building it from scratch and could learn from the past?

Reward Volunteers

People who volunteer to help run the league play for free. Thats the least a league could do. This applies to board members, team captains, and season-long referees.

Some Numbers and Dates

Number of teams: 8-16

Number of weeks: 10

• April: gear up and throw a pre-season party
• May: 3 games (Memorial Day)
• June: 4 games
• July: 3 games (4th of July) and the mid-season party
• August: break! (or maybe 1/2 more games)
• September: Labor Day and then the playoffs + end-of-season party

Top 4 teams from the regular season get 1st round byes. I think this is important. Rewards performance during the season, without excluding any of the teams from the post-season.

Playoffs, end of season party, etc occurr post-Labor Day. A longer season, plus a dead-zone during much of August can make this happen. Every summer teams have problems with people going to the beach or being on vacation. And why not? Its fucking summer! Hell yeah, Ill go to Dewey over some sticky quarterfinal on the Mall. No reason we cant do this.

Communication

Create a website to effectively communicate important information:

• The current week, game match-ups (locations/times)
• Results from past weeks
• Maps/directions to fields
• News/blog
• BB boards

Set-up listserves for all relevant entities in the league:

• the captains
• the board
• each team

FUN!

Priority #1 is to reach an agreement with a bar over drink/food specials for kickball players. Having tables set-up in advance is a plus.

Once all costs are accounted for (insurance, equipment, overhead, etc), all money is directed to the party account. Three parties (pre/mid/post) are probably sufficient. Insufficient attention has been paid towards making the happy hours more fun. This will be rectified.