Understanding the Practice Schedule:

The Board makes an effort to ensure all teams have access to the VCAA fields for practice time. All teams are allotted time to practice at VCAA. This time is valuable and needs to be respected by all who use the facilities at VCAA. It is critical that anyone using the facilities respect the time on / in and access to the resources allocated to the scheduled teams. There is a common practice of camping out at the facilities and using fields or cages that are unused at that time. While this does fundamentally guarantee that the facilities are utilized to their fullest it does present the potential conflict of overlapping usage. The most telling issue is when a team assigned to use the facilities arrives to practice and finds another team using the field or cages intended for their practice. In all cases this can be easily sorted out, however when there is a very finite time available for practice, any time spent cajoling or negotiating with another team to vacate the facilities is time poorly spent. It is critical for all of us - Coaches, Managers and Parents to honor the published practice schedule and allow unfettered access to the scheduled teams.

Teams are assigned to begin their practices at a specific location in most cases either on the playing field or in the batting cages. Historically, the understanding is Team A uses the field for half the practice time (while Team B is in the batting cages) and the batting cages for the other half of the practice time (while Team B is on the field). During the pre-season there are generally only 2 teams scheduled per day. Once the season begins there are only 3 practice days available at VCAA, in order to accommodate a time for all the teams to practice there are up to 4 teams scheduled to practice each day (MWF). It is important that the teams with early practice honor the end time to allow the teams following time to practice. This is especially critical in the first 2 weeks of the season as the practice times are severely abbreviated. Once we pass the Daylight savings time change this issue begins to abate as more daylight hours are "available". Any questions or comments relating to this issue may be addressed to the scheduler.

Be Aware: In the event of rain out and games need to be made up practice time will be overridden to accomplish game play.