Code of Conduct

Please abide by the Code of Conduct and the general principles they represent.

Our Code of Conduct is linked here: Code of Conduct 

In addition, our goals, are in order:

1)    Safety

2)    Sportsmanship and Friendship

3)    Developing basketball skills and a joy for the sport.

We want to have good competitive games. But that is not a priority. 

Team Formation and Competition

We hope to have the teams formed by October 20 but it may take a few days longer. Your coach will reach out to you. We will email you periodic updates as well. No need to email us unless you haven't heard from a coach or us by October 26th. NOTE: Please check your spam for emails from us at encinitasnjb@gmail.com

Teams WILL BE unbalanced because, as a recreational and developmental league, we take teammate and coach requests and so few kids actually show up for evaluation regardless.

But that’s ok. In almost every age group, we will have at least at least an upper division and a lower division. So, if your child’s team is in a lower division within an age group, they will play most—but not necessarily all- of their games against other “lower division” teams.

In addition, a variety of other factors may impact the relative balance of teams. For instance, there are times where reasonably evenly matched teams end up in non-competitive games because the best players from one team are missing the game and the worst players from another team are missing.

Our experience is that the kids won’t care about the outcome of the game as soon as they get their juice box, especially if you don’t care or make a big deal out of it. Ask yourself questions like “What is my child learning?” or “Is my child having fun?” rather than worrying about the team record.

Please keep the league’s goals referenced earlier in mind.

Game Schedule and Scheduling

If you want to know what the possible game dates are, they are posted on the home page of our web site: www.encinitasnjb.org. You may not have a game on every one of those possible dates. There may be weekends that you have two games. 

Your first games will be November 2nd or November 9th.

The schedule for November 2nd should be published by October 26th. The schedule for November 9th and 16th should be on or before November 2nd.

After that, you can expect to have the schedule for a given Sunday approximately two weeks in advance.

The reason we do it this way is that it increases the probability that your child will be able to attend games because we consider “coach requests” when we put the schedule together.

For the coaches to do that however, you need to communicate with them about your child’s availability on any given week with as much notice as possible. So, if you know that your child won’t be able to play one weekend, give the coach as much heads up as possible so the coach can make an appropriate request.

There is no guarantee that we will be able to accommodate coach requests but we have a pretty good track record of doing so.

Once the schedule is published, we are very reluctant to change it because any change typically necessitates multiple changes, which gets very complicated and takes quite a bit of time. 

In sum, please give your coaches your child’ availability at least three weeks in advance so they can make suitable requests.

Practices

Practices are optional but we do recommend your child attend. Missing practice does not impact their playing time at all but they miss out on the skill development, etc., that comes with practicing. However, if you have other priorities, it’s ok.

We do recommend that you let coaches know whether or not your child will be able to attend a practice or not. It helps the coaches plan their practice.

Coaches

Coaches are volunteers. They are the heroes of the league. Please treat them as such. If you disagree with something a coach is doing with respect to the basketball strategy, practice drills, etc., you can discuss it with the coach or volunteer to be a coach in the future.

If there is a coach that isn’t abiding by playing time rules, demonstrating poor sportsmanship or not coaching in accordance with the specifics or principles enshrined in our Code of Conduct, please email us here at encinitasnjb@gmail.com

Referees

Every one of our referees is a Junior College or High School varsity trained referee. They are certified and highly qualified.

To a person, they will say that refereeing recreational basketball is harder to referee than junior college basketball because of the skill disparity between teams or even within teams.

Their #1 goal is safety. Their next goal is to help the kids learn the game. They have been instructed to call the game according to their best judgement with those goals in mind. 

What this means in practice is that the context of the individual players and the game matter. For instance, a very skilled child will be held to a higher standard while a kid who is playing basketball for the first time will be held to a lower standard. In addition, in the event that there is a lopsided game, the referees will take that into consideration and call the game in an unequal manner to help manage the score to the extent that they can.

It will feel like it’s “unfair.” The kids might complain. But it's okay. It’s by design. 

If the game is close, you can expect a more uniform, consistent standard. But remember, we only have one referee per game (until the playoffs) so they will miss calls. It's okay. It's a good lesson for the kids to learn to deal with perceived injustices or "unfair" situations. Referees are human. They are doing their best. They can't see everything perfectly, especially if they are the only one on the court. 

The most important things for a referee to do is to call the game to help ensure the safety of the kids, help the kids learn the game, and to comport with the Code of Conduct generally. "Fairness" and "consistency" are secondary goals at best and are context dependent. 

Feedback

If you have well-intentioned, constructive feedback about the league that will help us achieve one or more of our primary goals listed above, we are eager to hear it. Some of the best ideas that have improved the league have come from parents and coaches.

If there is behavior by a parent, referee, coach or player that doesn’t comport with the Code of Conduct specifics and principles, we are eager to hear from you as well.

Our email is: encinitasnjb@gmail.com

It may take us awhile to respond but we will respond at some point.