South Sunrise Little League

Registration is still open for our Spring baseball and softball divisions. Register now for our Spring 2021 season at www.southsunrise.com! The SSLL Board met recently to discuss options for our Spring 2021 season. While the State of California lifted the stay-at-home order this week, we still need Orange County to enter the "red tier" to play competitive baseball and softball (we are currently in the purple tier - one tier back). Orange County appears to be on the right tra...jectory as it pertains to COVID-19 benchmarks and we think we will be back in action sometime this Spring, but we also don't think the season will begin as originally scheduled. That said, the Board voted to push the season back two months to allow our county time to enter the red tier and give us time to plan a safe and meaningful season. Tryouts will now be pushed to Saturday, March 20 and Opening Day will take place Saturday, April 17. We plan on offering an 8-10 week season from that point. Leading up to tryouts, we will be offering four spring training sessions on the following Saturdays: 2/20, 2/27, 3/6, 3/13. These sessions will be three hours in length each Saturday and will be offered to boys and girls, ages 4-12 (separated by age groups). The camp will focus on fundamentals and preparing for the 2021 season. The cost of the camp is $75 and covers all four sessions. Your child may participate in the camp if you have: 1) Registered for the 2021 season and have paid at least $75 toward registration, or 2) Registered and paid directly for the Spring Training camp on our website. We recommend just registering for the 2021 season to receive a better value (12 hours of camp and the regular season). If you are not interested in registering for the season and just want to register for the camp, that option will be available on the website later this week. More information regarding camp format, times, safety protocol, etc. will be sent out in a couple of weeks. All safety measures the league takes will be in line with requirements by Little League Baseball, the State of California, County of Orange, City of Orange, etc.

Register now for our Spring 2021 season at www.southsunrise.com! Receive a $25 early bird discount if you register on or before December 18. We offer a payment plan to those who prefer to pay after the first of the year. First payment isn't due until January 2021. Due to COVID-19, the State of California is currently only allowing youth sports leagues to offer practices and camps, but we are hopeful the State will allow youth sports competition to resume soon. The SSLL Board ...of Directors is actively planning as if we will be able to offer a typical Spring Little League baseball and softball season as normally schedule. That said, we highly recommend you register now to reserve a spot rather than "wait and see." If the state re-opens youth sports, we will immediately move forward with offering a season as schedule. If we are unable to offer a typical season, we plan on offering some sort of alternative that falls within the state's and city's guidelines for youth sports. We are taking safety seriously for our players and families and will do whatever is necessary to offer a fun, enjoyable and safe baseball experience.

Spring 2020 Baseball and Softball registration is now open! Receive a $25 discount if you register before December 4th. Head over to www.southsunrise.com to register now!

SSLL Families, Yesterday, the state of California again disallowed youth sports activities indefinitely. All practices, camps, and games are not allowed. The Board convened Monday evening and determined that a meaningful summer season is no longer possible. You may still claim a partial refund for the Spring season by clicking this link: https://docs.google.com//1FAIpQLSeyHbwrJ8B3sfGbHh/viewform. ... The refund portal will be open until July 31st. If your refund isn't claimed by July 31st, we will assume it is a donation to the league. If you have already requested a check refund, please be patient with us, as we had a slight delay in processing the checks. We hope you know that we exhausted every single option available to us to offer baseball to your children this year. Unfortunately, the powers that be have prohibited kids in California from enjoying youth sports while kids in other states get to partake. Such is the whimsical nature of the handling of this "pandemic." Spring 2021 registration will open in October and will be the league's 60th anniversary season. We promise to make it the best season SSLL has ever had! We hope you will come back to join us! -SSLL Board of Directors

The city permitted practices to resume this Saturday (tomorrow). All of the returning managers have been notified and briefed on the safety procedures. The managers who are remaining to coach should have contacted you by now. To offer you a quick update on the outlook for summer baseball, we were optimistic that guidelines for youth sports GAMES would be published by the state soon, but based on the latest COVID-19 numbers, it is looking less likely we will be playing games w...ithin the next month. On the other hand, since facts change daily with this pandemic and the sentiment surrounding it, we may very well be playing games soon. Point being, don't have any clue when games will resume. We are literally dealing with this on a day-by-day basis. That said, we are in the (non-profit) business of offering youth baseball and softball. The goal of the Board has been and continues to be to offer some sort of season to those members who want to participate, especially the older players who are in their last few years of Little League. Since the league has incurred substantial front-loaded costs, we figured it was a better value for its members to play baseball rather than receive a small, partial refund. With that in mind, we are going to continue with practices tomorrow and plan on practicing for a couple of weeks with the hopes that we receive guidelines from the state for games within the next few weeks. The Board will reconvene July 6th to discuss our options in light of any new information we may have by then. Best case scenario, we receive guidelines and can resume games for 6-7 weeks. Worst case scenario, the kids get some exercise and practice baseball for a couple of weeks. We are still offering partial refunds through July 31st to those who want them. You may resume practices with your team in the meantime and still be eligible for a refund if games never resume. As for accommodating everyone who wants to play, the initial goal was to open registration to out of boundary players to fill rosters, but since so many managers have dropped off from coaching in the past week or two, we do not have enough volunteers to coach and make that happen at this time. We may be able to allow entire teams to come over from other leagues to play games (should games resume), but only if they have managers. We will do our best to plug our "orphan" players into our current teams, but again, our capacity is smaller due to losing managers. If your child really wants to play, please respond to this email and let us know so we can try to get them plugged into a team. Or if you are interested in stepping up to manage a team, let us know. Thank you again for patience and understanding. Our motive is simply to give our members options for the summer and offer some glimmer of fun to our kids, who have been most affected by this global shutdown. -SSLL Board of Directors

League Members, The SSLL Board of Directors convened tonight to discuss options for Spring/Summer baseball. The County of Orange announced today that youth sports practices may resume immediately under the CDC guidelines set forth for Day Camps. Youth sports games may not resume until further guidance is received from the state, which is coming very soon. The City of Orange is actively working on their own guidelines for its permit holders, and is expected to publish tho...se within the next few days. That said, we will likely be allowed to resume practices within a week or two at the most and hopefully games shortly after. We would still like to offer some sort of summer baseball league in the months of June, July, and possibly part of August. Our board has already drafted a thorough return-to-play safety plan and will augment our plan once we have a chance to review the city’s specific guidelines. Once the safety plan is finalized, it will be published to the league. We are all taking safety very seriously and hope to provide peace of mind to any of you who decide to return. We have reached out to all of the team managers. Most are interested in returning to manage their Spring teams, with a few exceptions. We are going to instruct all managers to reach out to their teams to let you know their intentions of returning or not. If your child would like to play but is on a team without a manager, we will try to find a replacement manager or place your child on a new team. We want every child who wants to play to have a chance, so we will work tirelessly to find a team for everyone. We have even discussed opening limited registration to players from other leagues who have no baseball options to fill any depleted rosters. Nevertheless, we understand that some of you may want to withdraw and not participate in summer baseball. To that end, the Board has decided to offer the following three options to its members: 1. Remain registered and play summer baseball (no action needed from you) 2. Withdraw and receive a partial refund after incurred costs (Click this link: https://forms.gle/7BKF5pBks7c1fmn99) 3. Withdraw and donate registration fees to the league’s scholarship fund (Click this link: https://forms.gle/7BKF5pBks7c1fmn99) If you decide to withdraw, please inform your team manager after you fill out the withdrawal form. We will be accepting withdrawal/refund requests through July 31st. If you think there is a chance you would like to play summer baseball, we encourage you to remain registered, as it will cost you more to re-register later on and there may not be availability at that point. Thank you very much for your patience these past few months. We are very disappointed that the Spring season did not work out as planned, but we assure you we will make the summer season as fun and memorable as possible for the kids! We will continue to provide league-wide updates as we receive news information. -SSLL Board of Directors

We were informed by the City of Orange that our field permit will not resume this Monday, June 1st as anticipated. All field permits in the city have been further suspended indefinitely. The city is closely following the State of California’s four stages of reopening and youth sports falls somewhere within stage three of that process. The state has hinted that stage three could begin as early as next week, but obviously nothing is certain. The SSLL Board has met numerous time...s over the course of this shutdown to discuss our options as a league. We still believe we can successfully complete the Spring 2020 season over the summer if we are permitted to resume within the next couple of weeks. Based on feedback we received from the league members via the team managers, we learned the vast majority of the league would like to resume the season as well. That said, we are going to remain in a wait-and-see mode, hoping the state indeed begins stage three in the next week or so. In preparation, we have assigned a safety committee to draft a return-to-play safety plan, utilizing best practices recommended by Little League International and the CDC and the WHO. We are confident we will be ready to play baseball in a safe manner as soon as we get the word from the city that we are permitted to play. The Board will reconvene in the next couple of weeks to discuss next steps. If news changes for the better before that, we are prepared to convene and ramp things up quickly. If nothing changes and a summer season no longer seems feasible, we will notify the league members of partial refund or credit options. Thank you for your patience these past couple of months. We are hopeful we can get our kids back out there playing baseball as soon as possible! -SSLL Board of Directors

The SSLL Board of Directors met this week to discuss options for the Spring 2020 season. At this time, the city has suspended all field permits until May 31st. The fact is many of the league’s costs are front-loaded (uniforms, field refurbishment, charter fees, insurance, etc.) so we would ideally still like to complete our 2020 season if possible. Assuming the state, county, and city allow youth sports to resume, the tentative plan is to resume practices on June 1st and play... out the remainder of the season through July 31st. We are confident we can fit a complete game schedule for all divisions within that span of time. The team managers have been commissioned to reach out to their respective teams to gather feedback as to how many families would be interested in returning to play out the season over the summer. Please look for an email from your coaches and provide prompt feedback to him/her so the Board may make an informed decision at our next meeting in a couple of weeks. Our number one priority, besides the safety of our members, is finding a way for our kids continue playing baseball as soon as possible. We will do everything possible to try to make that happen this summer. If it looks like a summer league will not be possible due to continued restrictions, we will look into issuing partial refunds and/or credits for next year’s registration.

SSLL Families, I'm sure you have had your fair share of coronavirus emails and articles over the past week, but it can’t hurt to read one more. As of right now, we have no intention of halting league activities as a result of coronavirus. Practices and games will continue as scheduled until further notification; although the weather seems to be more of an issue lately than the virus.... Nevertheless, we remind you and your child to take normal precautions recommended by the CDC (regular hand washing, avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth; and avoid close contact with people who are sick). Kids should also avoid sharing playing equipment and water bottles (obviously) for the remainder of the season. For teams who share catchers gear or other playing equipment, we are highly recommending that teams carry disinfectant spray to sanitize the gear between use. Most importantly, if you or your child are sick in any way, please refrain from attending practices or games until you are cleared by a doctor for play. I am asking our coaches to not allow any players with cold or flu-like symptoms to participate or even be present at the facility. We are hoping everyone can work together as a team to help keep our league members safe and healthy. Hoping to still make the best of this season, even with the terrible weather and worldwide pandemic J. -Charles Amante, President

Tonight we are holding cap night at McPherson's auditorium (333 S. Prospect Ave, Orange, CA 92869). We will announce T-Ball teams promptly at 6:30p.m. Baseball divisions (Rookie, Majors, AAA, AA, A) will be announced beginning at 7:15p.m. Please arrive on time so you don't miss your child's name being called. Softball, Junior, 50/70, Seniors and Challenger divisions will not be announced tonight. Your coaches will be reaching out within a week with more information for the se...ason. Our coaches will be handing out the team's practice caps and holding a brief team meeting. If you are you unable to make it to cap night, your coach will be reaching out this week via email or phone.

Registration for our Spring baseball programs closes today at 5pm! If you have not already registered, please head over to www.southsunrise.com to register now! T-Ball and Softball registration will remain open for another week or so.

Great first day of Spring Training Camp! Over 105 players came out this year!

Mandatory player evaluations (or "tryouts") will take place this Saturday, January 11 at South Sunrise Little League (333 S. Prospect, Orange, CA). Please note the player evaluations are for our Baseball divisions only (not Softball, T-ball, Juniors, or 50/70). Every baseball player league-age 7 and up is required to attend. If your player does not attend tryouts, he/she may not be selected to the appropriate or desired division and is subject to being placed on a waitlist.... Every player will make a team (the tryouts are for evaluation purposes only). If your child is league-age 7 and you would like them to remain in Rookie (beginning machine pitch) he/she is not required to attend tryouts, but please plan on coming anyway for uniform fitting. The following chart indicates the time your player is scheduled to check in based on league-age:

Last chance to register for our FREE T-Ball and Softball Clinic tomorrow at South Sunrise Little League. This is open to all boys and girls, ages 3-6. They will have a chance to run the bases, bat, field, throw, play a t-ball game and get a free snack from our snack bar! The event will run 10am-noon. Please arrive early for check-in. Register now at www.southsunrise.com.