USA Softball Fall Coaches informational
USA SOFTBALL & MN Softball Coaches Guide to Fall Ball
COMPLIANCE
Every year we all do several compliance tasks to properly vet the adults that co-mingle with our athletes. ACE, Background Check, and SafeSport certification does not start until August 21, 2024. These tasks can be performed at https://www.registerusasoftball.com.
• ACE – Each team needs one ACE trained coach. ACE training is coaching training. This certificate is good until August 31, 2026.
• Background Check – Each coach or on field personnel needs to be background checked. This certificate is good until August 31, 2026.
• SafeSport – Each coach or on field personnel needs to pass SafeSport training. This certificate is good until August 31, 2026.
• Concussion – Each coach needs to pass concussion testing. This certificate is good for three years from the date of receipt.
We will not accept background checks or SafeSport from any other sources other than the above. Other certifications might cover you and your association, but they do not cover Minnesota Softball or our community and club associations. For more information on Compliance Tasks go to https://www.mnsoftball.com, click on the Compliance in the left menu, and select the compliance task you need help with.
Download your completed Certificates and upload them to Minnesota Softball. For more help with this please visit MN Softball Click on Support and then Help Videos
SCORING GAMES AND SCHEDULES
Once your games are completed, enter your scores. Either the winning or losing coach can enter the scores. Make sure they are entered by Monday morning at the latest because that is when we typically start creating the next weekend’s schedule. We do our best to have the schedules posted by Wednesday. ALWAYS – Check your team schedule late on Friday in case any changes have been made.
SEASON SCHEDULE
10U
• Week 1 – August 24
• Week 2 – September 7
• Week 3 – September 14
• Week 4 – September 21
• State – September 28
12U, 14U and High School
• Week 1 – August 25
• Week 2 – September 8
• Week 3 – September 15
• Week 4 – September 22
• State – September 29
For the state tournament, all teams are required to bring a gate fee check for $100 to the state tournament host, made out to the state host. The host names will be posted on the league website the week of the tournament.
LEAGUE GAME TIMES
For league games the game start times are:
• 12:00PM
• 1:30PM
• 3:00PM
• 4:30PM
In most cases your team will either play the early set of games or the late set of games. Start times for your team will change from week to week. There will be occasions where you will play a game, sit a game, and then play another game. This is because there are an odd number of teams in the schedule. It is rare but it does happen.
Teams are placed into regions based on their home community association location. The regions are generally described as:
• Northeast - north of US Highway 12/Interstate 94 and east of Interstate 35W.
• Northwest - north of US Highway 12/Interstate 394 and west of Interstate 35W.
• Southeast - south of US Highway 12/Interstate 94 and east of Interstate 35W.
• Southwest - south of US Highway 12/Interstate 394 and west of Interstate 35W.
Community associations that border these general boundaries may be shifted to a different region. Once you are assigned to a region, your games will most likely be played at sites inside your region to try to limit the amount of travel.
Week 4 might require more travel to get opponents of your team’s caliber. All games are 70 minutes in length, no new inning will be started after 70 minutes. Each team will need to provide one new softball and one used softball per gameday.
STATE TOURNAMENT
The state tournaments are played on the last weekend of September at sites throughout Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. We will do our best to seed the teams into appropriate tiers based on team records and classification.
Each coach will be responsible for bringing a gate fee check for $100 made out to the host before your first game. Hosts and who to make the check out to will be posted on the website the week of the state tournament.
Softballs are provided at the state tournament.
All state tournaments are one day tournaments. The format of the tournament is a two-game guarantee bracket. There is not enough daylight and fields with lights or time in the day to do a double elimination bracket. In most cases after you win or lose your first game, if you lose, you will be eliminated. You will most likely play outside of your region. The tournament will start at 9:00AM in most cases. Championships games will start at 4:30PM in most cases.
Championship awards will be given to the top two teams in the championship and consolation brackets. The four teams earning championship awards will also earn berths to the 2025 Monsta Championships and USA Softball Nationals. Championship and National berths are unpaid berths. You will be responsible for the entry fee for those future events.
If your team is not going to participate in the state tournament, please email us as soon as you can. We do not want to have forfeits at the tournament.
FALL LEAGUE AND STATE TOURNAMENT HOSTS
• Baldwin-Woodville NE
• Centennial Lakes NE
• Central St. Croix NE
• Chisago Lakes NE
• Mounds View NE
• Armstrong Cooper NW
• Brooklyn Center NW
• Brooklyn Park NW
• Coon Rapids NW
• Elk River NW
• Monticello NW
• Sartell NW
• STMA NW
• Waite Park NW
• Willmar NW
• East Ridge SE
• Farmington SE
• Hudson SE
• Lakeville SE
• Rosemount SE
• Belle Plaine SW
• Eden Prairie SW
• Martin County West SW
• Shakopee SW
• St. Peter SW
• Watertown-Mayer SW
WEATHER / COMMUNICATION
• If we get rain or inclement weather the host and umpires will collaborate on canceling games.
• Once a call has been made, we will communicate with you. We will post information on the league website.
• With this new system we have the option to send an email to all coaches in an event or division if needed.
• We have the option to send out an email to all coaches and parents in an event or division.
Please be patient with the site hosts while they are figuring out when to cancel. Calling them or calling the state office will just cause us more problems and delay decision making. We will notify everyone as soon as we have enough information.
COACHES AND PARENTS COMMUNICATION
Coaches and parents should not call or email to complain about their start time, opponent, or location of play. This is a travel league. Travel is required. Coaches and parents have the luxury of only looking at the schedules of one team. We schedule 750 teams every week and simply cannot examine every team, every time, every site. If we stopped scheduling to examine every team’s schedule, the obvious outcome is we would not get the scheduling completed.
If you email or call to complain we will just delete the emails. You do not understand or respect what it takes to pull this off. Please do not complain about the classification of the opponent of your team. We will reach a point in the year where C teams will play against higher classification teams. This can be for one of the following reasons:
• We have run out of unique opponents for your team. We do our best not to duplicate opponents.
• Your team has won enough games to justify playing a higher classified team.
Chain of Command for MN Softball/ Tri County:
1. Parents complain to coaches.
2. Coaches complain to directors.
3. Directors communicate with office staff.
(Please do not reach out to MN Softball directly. They are very serious about this )
THE QUALITIES OF GOOD COACHES
Always strive to be the coach that:
• Made the game more fun.
• Never made someone cry or quit.
• 100% of your players return to play next season.
Recent polling suggests that the players do not care about the awards or the outcome of games. They just want to play softball with their new friends and strive to get better. The only ones that care about won loss records and medals are parents. Your job is to partner with us, site hosts, officials, and the other coaches to provide a safe and competitive environment to excel at softball. We are all competitive by nature. Do not let your competitive juices get in the way of providing the right environment.
ROSTERS AND PROTESTS
Every coach is responsible for inviting every player they intend to use during games to their team and making sure that they are on the public roster. If you are using a player that is not on the roster, the other team assumes you are trying to cheat when possibly you were just trying to field a team. If you are incapable of dealing with rosters, go to your staff page and assign an assistant coach or a parent for this task.
On the roster, there are players with a green checkmark next to their names. This means that someone at the State Office has viewed the birth certificate and approved it because the name and birthdate match. THIS IS NOT A REQUIREMENT. However, if you are not going to get your birthdate and name verified, you will need to keep a copy of your birth certificate on you during games and tournaments. If a player does not have a green checkmark, this is NOT a good reason to protest. It simply means a parent doesn’t feel comfortable with uploading their daughter’s birth certificate or has not got around to it yet.
If you are going to protest a roster you will need to approach the site or tournament director with specifics on the protest and pay $200 cash. Parents and players are not allowed to protest player/team eligibility and will be ignored.
Minnesota Softball ● 877 Meander Court ● Medina, MN 55340
http://www.mnsoftball.com ● (763) 390-8103
Updated Aug. 2024