Social Media

Rochester Youth Baseball Association is using social media to help all who are interested in following our organization, our teams and our participants.  We encourage you to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and through our blog. We also want to hear from you if you have suggestions for other social media we could use to keep you connected with RYBA. 

Twitter

http://www.twitter.com/rybamn  

Our username is @rybamn.  If you are a Twitter user, you could just search for us in the search bar at the top of the page.  Follow us!

We will be implementing a new use of Twitter this season to allow you and any of your family or friends to follow your son’s team!  Each team that is part of RYBA this season, whether a team from the house league or a travel team, will be assigned a team hashtag to use when posting a tweet on Twitter so that anyone who follows the hashtag can also follow the latest updates about your team.  Coaches will be assigned a team hashtag along with their team player assignments this spring.  If your coach uses Twitter, he or she will send you the appropriate Twitter hashtag.  The commissioner for each grade will also have a list of hashtags associated with each team if your son’s coach does not use Twitter. 

RYBA coaches who do not use Twitter will be encouraged to seek out a team parent who can be responsible for posting tweets for the benefit of the players, parents, family and friends. 

You can contact Aaron Rindflesch, RYBA’s co-director of social media, if you have questions about our Twitter account or if you want to follow any team-associated hashtag.  Our organization’s hashtag is #rybamn. 

Facebook

RYBA has operated a Facebook site for several years.  Like us on Facebook!  Our general page can be found at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rochester-Youth-Baseball-Association-RYBA/154889614528591?ref=ts .  The RYBA Traveling page is at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rochester-Traveling-Baseball-RYBA/125677647319 . 

Blog

If you are reading this, you know that we also have a blog.  It is available at http://rybamn.blogspot.com.  In addition to our regular blog posts this offseason, we may continue to post relevant content during the season.  A link to the blog is always available on our web site, too.  http://www.rybamn.com. 

Other Social Media

At RYBA we would like to use any social media that will reach our community.  If you have suggestions for other uses of social media or other applications (Google Plus, Pinterest, etc.), please feel free to contact either of the co-directors of social media below.

RYBA Social Media Committee

Aaron Rindflesch

arindflesch@gmail.com

Craig Brown

kanolatwo@gmail.com

Chris Powell

powellsolutions@gmail.com

Fields, Batting Cages, and Restrooms

We received many comments about the fields, restrooms and other facilities used by the Rochester Youth Baseball program.  This week we will attempt to give everyone more insight into these areas.

NEW BATTING CAGES FOR 2014!

The big news is that we received approval by the state to build an additional equipment shed and a set of covered batting cages at the RBC complex.  We hope to have this area ready for our opening day in May 2014.  The cost of the building and new cages will be completely funded by RYBA.  This is an example of how we are using your fees to continuously make improvements to the program.

FIELD MAINTENANCE

RYBA does not own any of the fields used for our program.  All the fields are owned by either the City of Rochester, School District 535, or the State of Minnesota.  The city is in charge of maintenance at the Park and Rec fields, and although we are allowed to do routine upkeep, there are strict rules that prohibit us from applying weed killers and pesticides or filling in low areas with dirt.  We do work closely with the Park and Recreation department to secure fields for use by our house and travel teams and we have first right to these fields on our assigned nights.  The fields at the Rochester Baseball Complex are owned by the State of Minnesota and are under the care of the Rochester Community College during the men’s baseball and women’s softball season.  Our RYBA staff does help maintain these fields and you will often find our field crew hard at work on these fields during the week, especially during tournament weekends.

PORTABLE RESTROOMS

We often receive questions and complaints about the lack of portable restrooms at the city and grade school fields.  This is especially common with kids involved in the K-3 program.  Please be aware that the timing of portable restroom placement for the summer is controlled by Park and Rec for City owned fields and by Rochester School District 535 for the public school fields. 535 will not allow placement of outdoor portable restrooms at any school until the school year has officially ended.  This is usually in the second week of June. Park and Rec controlled GAME fields have potties placed by the first week in May.  Unfortunately RYBA does not have any control over this policy. 

Our best recommendation for avoiding accidents by your little leaguer is for parents to make sure all players, especially the younger children, go to the restroom before coming out to games and practices.

If you have any additional questions, ideas or suggestions about these issues please contact an RYBA board member.

Mike Gozola

RYBA Director of Fields

gozola.mike@rochesterbaseball.net

The RYBA House League Program

The Rochester Youth Baseball Association's House Program provides kids with an opportunity to play baseball on fields within the city of  Rochester.  There is no travel outside of the city.

The House program consists of the Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Grade programs and the 4th, thru 8th/9th Grade programs. The main difference between the age levels is that K-3 has all skill levels within the program, but the 4th - 8/9th Grade programs include a Majors and a Minors division.  Placement in a division is determined prior to the start of the season with 2 - 3 days of tryouts and evaluations done by school grade.  This is done to attempt to create a safe, but competitive environment where players can enjoy the game with kids at a similar skill level.

TRYOUTS

The tryouts are evaluations on the fundamentals of fielding, catching, throwing, hitting, and base running.  During the tryouts, house league coaches may conduct the drills at each station, but the evaluations are done by traveling program coaches for impartiality.   After tryouts, each player's evaluation is entered into a spreadsheet. Players scoring above the median are placed on Majors teams, and players scoring below the median are placed on Minors teams, but ALL kids are placed on a team. We encourage all players to tryout. We do allow players to forgo the tryout evaluations, and they are placed on Minors teams. There will be a future blog regarding Tryouts where I plan to delve more into the details of House Program tryouts and evaluations.

PLAYERS/TEAMS/COACHES

Last year in all House Programs K-8th there were over 130 teams formed and more than 1,570 registered kids, played in 1,890 regular season games. We reached out  and select one Head Coach for each of those teams.  They in turn selected at least one or two assistant coaches. Wow! That number is fabulous.   In addition to the players and coaches, there are many more parents and families members involved in Rochester Baseball in various ways. Our Motto is "Youth Growing Through Baseball". Players having fun and along the way learning baseball fundamentals should be the goal of parents and coaches. We encourage this over winning games, and hope to instill this sentiment into everyone involved.

GAMES

During the regular season two weekday games are played in the evenings for all grades.  The games are played either Monday's and Wednesday's or Tuesday's and Thursday's depending on grade. Games begin in mid May running up to July 4th holiday with some time off for the Memorial and Independence day holidays.  Then a few more weeks of games in July. The seasons for Kindergarten and 1st grade are then completed.

TOURNAMENTS

For 2nd and 3rd Grade players, there will be an optional year end tournament around the first weekend in August.

Playoffs for 4th - 8th grade are held after regular season finishes. Generally starting on a Friday evening or Saturday morning, concluding with a championship game on Sunday afternoon.

The RYBA website is a great place to visit for updated information. Once the site is updated for 2014, there you will find Tryout Schedule, Grade Rules, Coach Training, Team Schedules, and later… Game Results. There is also an opportunity for each team to create their specific Team webpage with practice schedule, notes, team stats, and pictures.

Looking forward to successful 2014 Baseball Season.

Tom Jahns - House Programs Director

trjahns53@gmail.com