HVBSA Spring Rec Programs: Canceled

To the HVBSA Community,

To quote Pat Gillick, "Baseball is about talent, hard work, and strategy.  But at the deepest level, it's about love, integrity, and respect."

Out of immense love, integrity, and respect for our children and our entire community, the HVBSA Board has ultimately decided to cancel the Spring 2020 Baseball and Softball Rec Season.  We did not take this decision lightly and recognize how disappointing this is for you and your children.  This decision reflects the respect we have for our community, as it would be irresponsible to prematurely start up our operations.  Please note that your registration fees will be refunded.  Thank you for your patience as we work through the logistics of processing the refunds through SportsEngine, which we estimate may take up to 30 days. 

As parent volunteers, we collectively share a love of America's pastime and, of course, a love for our children.  We miss spending evenings and weekends on the field together with our children, as spring just doesn't feel right without baseball and softball.  

Keeping Baseball/Softball Alive
We each now have an opportunity to model to our children both empathy and resiliency.  We empathize with the fact that our children have all faced such an incredible amount change in the past two months and now this is one more thing that this pandemic has taken away from them.  As adults, we can also model resiliency and invite everyone to keep baseball/softball 'alive' in their children's lives by having a catch, watching some old classic games, and/or hitting off a tee.  

We also continue to post workouts and other updates on our Facebook page.  Please follow us!  Here's the direct link: https://www.facebook.com/HVBSABulldogs/

Potential Summer Rec League (TBD)

As a league, we continue to focus on keeping our fields and facilities ready for play.  We are looking into doing a Summer Rec League assuming the situation allows for such activities by that time, and we hope to share more information about that over the forthcoming weeks. 

Baseball Travel Teams
For those with children that play on a Travel team, as of right now USABL plans to start up operations in mid-June.  Travel fees (which include Insurance, USABL, and Field Operations costs) will be assessed at a later point in time. Those on Travel Teams will also represent Hopewell for Divisional & State play.  Your coach will be in touch with more information as it becomes available.  If you have any questions, please reach out to Jim Baratta (jimbaratta3@gmail.com) or your coach. 

If your child was not named to a Travel Team and has interest, please send an email to Jim Baratta (jimbaratta3@gmail.com) noting the interest and your child's age on 4/30/20.  Note: this expression of interest does not guarantee placement on a team.  

Sponsor Highlights
As you can imagine, none of programming would be possible without the incredible support from the 50+ sponsor organizations that support HVBSA each year.  The cost of running our baseball/softball operations far exceeds the funds raised from registration fees.  Thank you to each of our sponsors.  We have been in touch with all of our sponsors directly and have heard their personal stories on how this pandemic has impacted their business.  As HVBSA is founded on the core tenet of community, we will be working hard to highlight our sponsors through 'sponsor highlights' on our Facebook page and through email updates.  Thank you for showing our sponsors the same level of gracious support that they have shown us all of these years.  

We are grateful to live in a community that is so supportive and thriving.  We will navigate these unprecedented times together, as a community, and look forward to the day (hopefully soon) when we can once again start up our baseball & softball operations.

Should you have any questions, please reach out.

Best regards,

The HVBSA Board