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Hi Joe,
At the beginning of 2009, a couple of scoring course were run. Is anything similar being planned for 2010?
Hi Matt,
Many thanks for expressing an interest.
The GBBSA receives no funding, so the way the clinics have worked is me combining it with a trip I happen to be making anyway (e.g. the ones in Bristol and Ross-on-Wye), or doing it close to my home in St Albans (e.g. the ones in Herts, Essex, and London), to keep the amount that I’m out of pocket as low as possible. The teams hosting the clinics have always kindly arranged a room for me.
While I have no real problem with paying out of my own wallet to advance British baseball, I think shelling out excessively is an unhealthy precedent for me to set, as the governing body will then accept it as the norm. This is not me having a dig at the BBF, as I know they are running on a very small budget at the moment, but funding for scoring from the body is currently non-existent. They will not even cover scorer expenses at the national finals any more.
Equally, I think it would be an unhealthy precedent for clubs or individuals to have to pay travel/accommodation expenses for me to run clinics. This is really something that the governing body should cover. If funding increases again, I hope that scoring will be looked at as a priority.
If I am making a trip to the Midlands, I’d be happy to try to integrate a course if it worked with you (unfortunately, I don’t currently have anything in the calendar).
Alternatively, I’d be very happy to run a live preseason clinic, using the brilliant Herts Spring League as a backdrop (here are details of the multi-week preaseason tournament from 2009: http://www.hertsbaseball.com/HSL/).
Joe
Hi Joe,
Appreciate the feedback and understand the funding issues all too well.
We are hoping to expand into two teams next season so need to graduate more umpires, scorers etc. within our club. We had been thinking of sending a team to the Spring league in 2010, so perhaps tying in scoring clinic would work well.
Regards,
Matt
Hi Matt,
That sounds like a pragmatic solution in the current climate (if you’ll pardon the business speak).
I hope we can work something out.
And best of luck with your club’s expansions plans. It’s great to hear of clubs going in the right direction.
Cheers,
Joe