View Royal Fastball Association
Park President’s Report

Welcome to a new season of fastball at View Royal!!

In 2011 we fielded teams in all age brackets from Learn to Play through Midgets. All teams performed well and were playing some great ball by the time District Playoffs came around. 

We hosted several tournaments in 2011 with weather being a factor in two of them and poor registration in essentially all of them. There was a HUGE increase in the number of tournaments hosted in our District and the impact of this was lowered turnout for all. Hosting the Squirt A Provincial championships was a huge success. The organizing committee created an event that flowed smoothly from start to finish. 

In 2012 we hosting less tournaments, as Midget B/C and a Squirt A/B. We have also declared to host a pre-Provincial Squirt A/Peewee A on July 7-8. We have tried to host this tournament many times and have never had much luck. However, I am stubborn.  On the weekend of July 27-29 we are having the Midget A Provincials at View Royal. The VIctoria Fastball Club is the host but View Royal will be running the concession and keeping the profit. This tournament is large enough that half of it must be split to another park. 

The question was asked "Why do we only host "A" level Provincials". We have applied for "C" and "B" level but there is a lot of competition for these events and because we only have three diamonds we fall short in their evaluation process. The "A" Provincials tend to have less teams and are not popular events for the Lower Mainland associations to host.

We have increased the registration fees this year. Part of this is due to Softball BC raising their fees. The second part is because of one complaint about our $20 Field Improvement Raffle. The intent of the raffle was to keep the costs down for our families. Unfortunately the complainant was threatening to draw us into a protracted legal discussion, so it was easier to simply raise the fees for everybody. 

For 2012 we expect to host teams in all age brackets. We will also host the two Devil's teams we hosted in 2011 (97A and 00A) and the newest Devil's team the 01A. The youngest A teams are a nice plus for our park as it shows off young committed players playing the game at the highest level.  I firmly believe the long term effect will be to help build our program at View Royal Fastball.  

Thank you all for coming to play at View Royal and I look forward to seeing you at the park.

Cheers

Norm Johnson, President
View Royal Fastball Association