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Scheduling
To make League participation attractive to a wide range of teams, the League has provided its member teams with fully customized schedules since its inception. Each team has its own website calendar to specify not only its play dates but the time intervals it is available to play on each of its play dates. The league also attempts to accommodate team preferences for other factors such as: doubleheaders, travel distances, and home only play dates. Field availability schedules are represented on a website calendar, by date and time of day, similar to team availability. Each team can be attached to any number of home fields and each home field can be attached to any number of field schedules. In combination, these two features give field owners the capability to partition field time among individual teams or groups of teams if they choose. For example, an owner with two fields and seven teams could reserve a portion of time on either field (or both) for the exclusive use of one or more of his teams. ENYTB developed proprietary scheduling software that identifies all possible home and away matches between any pair of teams based on the information contained on the website calendars just described. Website users have a similar capability for finding competitively matched opponents throughout the year for extra game play (GAME FINDER). GAME FINDER also can be used to find all possible make-up dates with another team, based on both teams' availability and current game schedules. This is useful when attempting to reschedule postponed games. Must-Play Games. A team must play a minimum of 6 AABC sanctioned games to qualify for AABC tournament play and 4 NABF sanctioned games to qualify for NABF tournament play. PONY has no required minimum. Many league games will count simultaneously under two or more sanctioning bodies. In addition to these minimum eligibility requirements for sanctioned tournament play, the League may require teams to play additional "must-play" games to qualify for competitive berths in the various NCTS. Divisions typically include 6 teams, although it ranges between 4 and 8 teams. The League Director determines an appropriate head-to-head "must play" requirement for each Division, usually 2 or 3 games. The typical divisional schedule includes 10 to 16 must-play games. A team can still qualify for a tournament berth without playing all its league must-play games, provided its point total in the STANDINGS is sufficient (see Competition Levels) and provided it has satisfied the must-play requirements of that sanctioning body. Wildcard Divisions. Teams can choose to play additional inter-divisional games in a "wildcard" division to compete for bonus berths in NCTS tournaments. The must-play head-to-head requirement in Wildcard Divisions is usually one or two games. Games between opponents from the same division, also count in the wildcard division. Extra Games. The League also schedules teams to play as many EXTRA games as they indicate. The website provides teams with the capability to find competitively matched opponents for extra games as well. The latter is particularly useful if a schedule gap is created by in-season postponements and reschedules. Rather than be idle on a sunny weekend day due to a late cancellation, hop on the website and find a list of all competitively matched teams that are available to play on that day when you are, use the League Directory to obtain their contact info, and begin dialing. Scheduling process. During the registration process, the League Administrator collects information on each team's sanctioning choices, power rating, number of games it wishes to play and whether it wants to participate in wildcard play. This information is sufficient for the League Director to create classified League Divisions and populate them with teams. Next, the League Administrator collects all team and field availability information from all owners and teams. The League Administrator then uses the league's proprietary software to schedule all "must play" games for all league teams. Once all "must play" games have been scheduled, the process is repeated for extra games among members. The process is repeated again for extra games involving non-members. The League Administrator drafts a tentative League schedule satisfying all scheduling constraints as enumerated herein by May 15th of each year. Each team's schedule is available online within its home area of the website. Every team also has online access to the league's entire Master Schedule. A special scheduling feature is available to all teams for games played on Opening Weekend as well. Reschedules. Following the official release of the tentative League Schedule, there is a two week window for teams to contact each other and arrange necessary reschedules. It is mandatory that teams accomodate all rescheduling requests during this "grace period". If any two teams are unable to find a reschedule date that works for both of them, the League Director should be contacted for assistance. He will help both parties find a way to schedule the game e.g., on a neutral field or via other reschedules. There is no penalty for nor any limit on the number of scheduling changes a team can make during this grace period. Once changes are agreed to by both parties, they should be entered on the ENYTB website. Failure to edit a rescheduled must-play game could result in the STANDINGS being computed incorrectly. It is the responsibility of both teams to ensure this does not happen. Only the home team has the capability to edit the game online. If the home team fails to do so, the away team should contact him to do so. Away teams can contact the division director or the League Administrator for assistance as well. Any game edit appears on both teams' online schedules simultaneously and an automatic email is sent to all parties, including both division directors and the League Office. Once the rescheduling grace period ends, schedules are considered final and teams are expected to adhere to them. Any non-weather related postponement/reschedule request after this time must be agreed to by your opponent, who is no longer under an obligation to accommodate your request. The League encourages members to be cooperative and make every reasonable effort to accommodate rescheduling requests throughout the entire season provided a timely notification of at least 7 days is provided. On the other hand, the League encourages members to NOT to accommodate any postponement request when notification is given less than 7 days in advance. In the latter instance, teams should take a forfeit win. This will encourage teams to be reliable and provide timely notifications. The penalty for non-playing forfeit losses is progressive. First, unlike playing losses, no point is awarded in the standings for any forfeit loss. Any team with three or more forfeit losses is subject to increasing fines and suspension at the discretion of the League. Non-Member Services. Many non-member teams register with ENYTB to play extra games with ENYTB member teams who are also seeking extra games, as well with other registered non-member teams. Non-members can avail themselves of the same scheduling options as ENYTB members. OPTION #1: GAME FINDER - REQUEST BOARD ONLY (w/o Website Access) FREE - Non-member teams unwilling or unable to pay for website access can have their game requests posted for free by contacting the League Director, who will register their team and post their requests on the ENYTB website. Non-members availing themselves of this free service will not have any non-public access to the website, but ENYTB member teams and full service non-members will have access to their game requests and contact information. Teams will contact them to schedule games if interested. This service is offered free to non-members as a benefit to members. OPTION #2: FULL WEBSITE ACCESS $75 FEE - With full website access non-members gain two additional self-scheduling tools.- They can post their own game requests on the ENYTB website and view and search the requests of all member and non-member teams. These requests can be easily tailored to field availability (home or away), skill level and age of opponent and single game or double-header, and even time of day. This service includes full access to the contact info of all ENYTB participants.
- Non-members teams can use ENYTB's super GAME FINDER tools to locate all teams of any type who are AVAILABLE to play on any given date and time. This search function also locates ALL dates when your team and another specific team are both available to play at the same time. Use of this tool by a non-member requires that the non-member provide detailed team and home field availability information to the League Office, similar to members.
