Frequently Asked Questions

It depends on whether you want your team to be eligible for sanctioned tournament play at the end of the regular season (most teams do).

If you do choose not to be eligible for any sanctioned tournaments, you can play as few games as you want.

If you choose to be eligible for one or more sanctioned tournament series:

• a minimum of 12 games is required at ages 13U and up; and,
[b][u]A minimum of 9 games[/u][/b] is required at ages below 13U.

A separate STANDINGS is maintained for each sanctioned National Championship Tournament Series(NCTS). Thus, teams will appear in a separate standings for each NCTS they register for. All games played by each team shall count in each of these standings. The various NCTS standings differ only as to which teams are included, which is determined by who registered for what. If all teams in an age division were to register for each available NCTS, the standings for each would be identical, assuming the same cut-off dates. Thus, a team can play as few as 12 games, have them count in all standings and thus be eligible for berths under all three sanctioning bodies.

NOTE: Some STANDINGS methodologies, not commonly used by ENYTB anymore, only count games between teams included in that standings or the first "x" number of games between any two included opponents.

All League teams can be eligible to compete for berths in as many as three NCTS, depending on the age division. To be eligible, a team must check both the sanctioning fee and tournament eligibility fee for a particular NCTS on their online registration page. Some of these fees are $0, but they still must be checked.

For example, The NABF sanctioning fee is shown as $0 because it is included with the tournament eligibility fee. This fee structure allows all ENYTB teams to be NABF sanctioned while only those teams that want to be eligible for an NABF NCTS pay a sanctioning fee. Thus, in this instance only, whether ENYTB is hosting a tournament or not, a tournament eligibility fee is charged. This approach is appropriate because the price ENYTB pays NABF is based on tournament berths, not registered teams. The benefits of registering all ENYTB teams with NABF include: insurance eligibility and player eligibility for tournaments (drafting eligibility).

Except for NABF, as just noted, a tournament eligibility fee is charged only when ENYTB hosts the entry-level tournament. Since ENYTB no longer hosts AABC tournaments, the tournament eligibility fee for any AABC NCTS is $0. All entry-level PONY tournaments are hosted by ENYTB thus, these tournaments require a tournament eligibility fee. In 2009, ENYTB spent nearly $30,000 on sanctioning fees alone. In 2010, ENYTB will spend more than $20,000 hosting these sanctioned tournaments. That is approximately $50,000/yr on sanctioned tournaments alone.