Captain's Meeting Report

I attended my first CCSL Captain's meeting last night - and there was plenty of drama. It culminated in an awkward, and quite frankly, sad election to remove the referee assignor. Apparently, there were serious communication problems notwithstanding his long service to the league. The volunteers that run our league take their jobs seriously.

Other news:

Spring season - it does in fact start on March 25th. The schedule will be out by next Tuesday, and this season, the officers promised to get the whole schedule out at one time. Don't forget that your dues to me ($99) are due by Friday March 23rd.

Fields - a growing issue (see the irony?). This Spring, things look fine. We'll be playing on the Mall occassionally, one of the great features of CCSL. Other games will be at familiar locations. But come Fall, we've got a problem. The Marina (being re-seeded) and Gannett (sold) will be out of commission, which is bad news because both were free. The league will have to pay more field usage fees, often costing in excess of $125/hr, which of course increases pressure on team fees. The league has long been in a wait-list position in Arlington, and they are looking elsewhere. They need people to help with this effort over the long term, if you're interested.

Refs - Jer and Nathan (new, to be announced later) are representing us as referees. Each team must provide one or be fined $200. We may have already incurred a fine in fact. As you might be able to understand now, this is a very organic, volunteer-driven league, so I will be asking folks to get more involved. We may train more referees as we go along.

Playoffs - we will continue to have a two-stage playoff for the top 6 teams in the league, unless the schedule has become too tight because of whether in which case there will only be 1 playoff weekend. The top two teams would play for 1st place, the third and fourth teams would play for third place, and the fifth and sixth teams would play for fifth place. We would have been that fifth team, narrowly edged out for a chance at third place. Also, no more golden goal in the playoffs. We are reverting to the FIFA rules; one 10 minute OT and then PKs.