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Unable To Play A Game As Scheduled? Here Are Your Options For Possibly Avoiding A Forfeit

posted by Administrator 05/20/2018 01:05:51

Unable To Play A Game As Scheduled?
Here Are Your Options For Possibly Avoiding A Forfeit.

Schedule reliability is extremely important. If you request X number of games you are expected to play all of them, as scheduled, unless bad weather prevents you from doing so.

However, ENYTB also recognizes that the realities of life sometimes make it impossible to play all your games as scheduled. This article describes the kinds of schedule changes that you can request as well as the process for doing so.

There are two broad types of schedule changes or transactions permitted by ENYTB:

1 - team-to-team requests; and,
2 - team-to-ENYTB requests (Admin Cancels).


About 98% of all ENYTB schedule changes are of the team-to-team type. The other 2% are team-to-ENYTB and are called ADMIN CANCEL Requests. Most teams don't understand ADMIN CANCELS nor the difference between ADMIN CANCELS and team-to-team transactions. This email addresses both issues.

ENYTB grants an "Admin Cancel" in only very limited and pre-defined situations. Those situations involve the following three specific types of conflicts:

1 - Sanctioned Tournaments Conflicts - where ENYTB teams are competing against other ENYTB teams via ENYTB regular season play for berths to a sanctioned tournament.

Example: 4 teams are competing for one berth. All four teams are scheduled for ENYTB regular season play the weekend of the tournament. Once we know which team has won the berth, that team is no longer available for league play that weekend so he requests an Admin Cancel from the league and it is approved.

2 - School-ball Conflicts - where the school team changes its practice or game schedule or announces the date of the school sports banquet.

3 - ENYTB Hosted Tournaments - where a team does not know if it is going to qualify for the tournament e.g., Super 8, or when a team late registers for an ENYTB hosted tournament e.g., June/July Madness or Last Man Standing.

All three ADMIN CANCEL situations have one thing in common - they involve specific ENYTB or school-ball related events where the events were unknown and unknowable at the time that the league schedule was constructed.

The Biggie - Team-To-Team Schedule Changes - Described Next

For all situations where your team is unable to play as scheduled and an ADMIN CANCEL is NOT applicable i.e., the vast majority of all such situations, other options, referred to as team-to-team transactions, are allowable. As the name implies, "team-to-team" transactions do NOT require ANY participation by league administrators. They are wholly transacted between the two teams involved in the transaction. ENYTB rules require that these transaction be executed through reschedule tools available on the game listing on your schedule. This ensures that the request complies with all applicable ENYTB rules regarding team-to-team schedule changes. This most important broad category of schedule changes is more fully described next.

First, keep in mind that you can always forfeit a game when you are unable to play as scheduled. Of course, the downside of a forfeit is that it results in a $75 fine.

FLEXIBILITY - Rather than have a hard and fast rule that all games must be played as scheduled or forfeited, ENYTB has adopted a set of rescheduling rules that provides teams with additional schedule flexibility, provided both you and your opponent are in agreement with the proposed change and the change follows all applicable ENYTB rules. Such transactions are known as team-to-team transactions i.e., they do NOT require ANY participation by league administrators or anyone other than the two teams.

NOTE: If you can't reach agreement with your opponent to postpone/reschedule or cancel your game w/o penalty, you are, of course, required to play the game as scheduled or to forfeit it.

Each allowable team-to-team schedule change is represented by its own reschedule tool. These tools are available on each game listing on your team schedule. (Same place as where you enter the score or ADMIN CANCEL requests, just a different icon.)

ALL ENYTB rules applicable to a specific schedule change are incorporated within the underlying logic of the reschedule tool.
Thus, the user doesn't need to actually know our rescheduling rules to reschedule a game (but it can't hurt), provided he has obtained agreement from his opponent and he has submitted his request to the website via the appropriate reschedule tool. Each tool is named to make its applicability obvious e.g., non-weather postponements, weather postponements, no harm, no foul cancellation etc. To view the name of a tool, simply hover your cursor over any tool icon.

The next example illustrates how the underlying logic of the reschedule tools incorporates ENYTB rules.

EXAMPLE: For all requests for a non-weather postponement or no harm, no foul cancellation, ENYTB rules require that the request be submitted via the respective rescheduling tool no less than 48 hours before the scheduled start of the game. Why is this? To provide the umpires with adequate notice to get reassigned and it gives your opponent a fighting chance to find another opponent to play in your place. Failing obtaining a new opponent, parents can use the 48 hour notice to re-arrange their weekend or evening. Hence, the reschedule tool for these two types of changes includes logic to reject any NWP/NHNFC request that does not meet the 48 hour criterion. So saying "the website wouldn't let me ..." is the equivalent of saying ENYTB rules won't let me because my request did not meet all of ENYTB's rules governing this type of schedule change.

So it is Wednesday night and you just found out you will not have 9 players for a game scheduled for Saturday at noon. Knowing ENYTB's 48 hour rule, you know that Friday night will be too late to enter a NWP or NHNFC request for a Saturday game to the website. You also know that you must talk to your opponent to see if he will agree to a change prior to entering your request to the website. Thus, you quickly realize that your only chance for avoiding a forfeit is to call your opponent tonight to see if he would agree to a schedule change i.e., by tomorrow night the system will block you from entering the schedule change for the next day regardless of what your opponent agreed to. And, of course, any change not entered to the website has no standing.

Why does ENYTB require teams to process all team-to-team schedule changes through the website reschedule tool? Because by doing so, the league is 100% assured that the following conditions have all been met:

1 - the schedule change complies with all ENYTB reschedule rules;

2 - the two teams are in agreement on the specifics of the change;

3 - the schedules of both teams have been updated accordingly, and,

4 - all affected parties have received email notification of the agreed upon change.

There are several different kinds of allowable team-to-team schedule transactions but they all have one thing in common - they are only "requests" for a change and your opponent may decline your request and insist that you either play the game as scheduled or forfeit. Whenever any such request is made, the team on the receiving end is 100% within its rights to decline the request and insist that the game be played as scheduled or forfeited i.e., making a request is NO guarantee that the request will be granted. In fact, if everyone were to freely grant schedule changes, the league would have little schedule reliability, which would likely harm the league if not destroy it outright.

NOTE: Teams are limited to no more than two non-weather postponements and two no harm, no foul cancellations per season.

Examples of specific kinds of team-to-team schedule transactions include the following:

1 - move the start time up to 2 hours in either direction - home team only and is the only schedule change besides a weather postponement, that doesn't require your opponent's approval. Still, you must notify him and process your "request" via the appropriate website reschedule tool.

NOTE: Changes of greater than 2 hours qualify as non-weather postponements and must be processed as such.

2 - change of game type - from DH to SG9 or SG7 or vice versa;

3 - move the game to another date and time (non-weather postponement);

4 - take the game off both team's schedules w/o penalty i.e., the no harm, no foul cancellation.

In summary, the following sequence of three steps is required to successfully complete any team-to-team transaction:

A - you must contact the opposing team's primary contact person to request a specific type of allowable schedule change.

B1 - If opponent declines your request, you should declare to your opponent whether you will be forfeiting the game or playing it as scheduled. (If you say nothing he may wrongly assume you are forfeiting or playing as scheduled.) If you will be forfeiting you must immediately enter a forfeit to the website.

B2 - IF opponent agrees to your request for a particular change, immediately submit the agreed upon change to the website via the reschedule tools located on each game listing.

C - Once you have entered your request to the website via a reschedule tool, the system will notify your opponent that he has a pending request to approve or deny and instructions for doing so. As soon as he acts to approve/deny the request, the system will automatically update both team's schedules accordingly and send email notifications to all affected parties.

NOTE: If you receive a request for a schedule change through the website and it is identical to what you thought you had agreed to, you should immediately approve it. If it differs, you should reject it. Either way, once you respond, that transaction is complete. All parties are immediately email notified of approvals and rejections.

NOTE: If a team fails to respond to an online request, the system will automatically approve the request before the scheduled date of the game.

IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND: This process removes the league from being in the middle of ALL team-to-team schedule transactions (thousands of schedule changes). It also removes the "he said/she said" aspect that often accompanies such communications.

So your options for changing your schedule when you recognize you will be unable to play a game as scheduled include:

1 - ADMIN CANCELS if applicable;

2 - Team-to-team if agreement can be secured & more than 48 hours before scheduled time of game; and,

3 - Notify your opponent that you are forced by circumstances to forfeit the game.

NOTE: One or two forfeits a year is not unusual or unexpected for any team. Much more than that suggests something is wrong i.e., team is unreliable to maintain a season long schedule.

IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a special reschedule tool for forfeiting games. Teams should forfeit online as soon as they notify their opponent that they are forced to forfeit. If your opponent notifies you he is forfeiting and doesn't actually forfeit the game on the website within 48hours of notification, there is another reschedule tool where you can forfeit on your opponent's behalf. This prevents you from being fined for a passed or forfeited game and it officially notifies all affected parties that the game has been cancelled by forfeit.

These procedures, involving managing one's schedule and keeping it up to date, have proven to be the most difficult of all things related to league participation for teams to understand and follow, yet they are absolutely essential to a smoothly functioning league. So do your best to understand and follow these quite simple procedures.

Habitual offenders of ENYTB's schedule reliability rules are not desirable members and their memberships can be terminated for this reason. I'm not talking about teams that make honest mistakes. I'm talking about teams that are repeat offenders and show no progress in performing their role in following these procedures and keeping their schedule current. If teams were allowed to cancel games as they pleased w/o consequence, the league experience would be ruined for everyone else and we don't want that.
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