Fall Ball Frequently Asked Questions
1. Do we have to travel to different sides of town?
If you live in the North Shore Area you would play most, if not all, of your games in the North Shore Area. If you live in the Waukesha Area you would play most, if not all, of your games in the Westside Area. The Richfield location is considered a middle ground, and both locations may play there. To help with the scheduling process, your team may travel minimally during the season, and should expect to travel outside of desired area at least one week of the season.
2. How do you handle scheduling?
We schedule the first 2 weeks in advance and then purposely wait until after the Labor Day weekend to schedule the latter weeks as we want to make every effort to have teams of like strength playing each other each week.
3. Do you take special requests in regards to the scheduling?
We will make every effort, but cannot guarantee, to honor scheduling requests. Scheduling requests are limited to teams that sign up as complete teams (as opposed to individual player sign-ups). Teams will need to submit their requests by early August for the first half of the season and by early September for the second half of the season. Individual player sign-up requests will not be honored.
4. How do you match up teams of like strength?
We do our best to schedule teams of similar strength. Each team indicates their level of experience on the registration form. After the first 2 weeks of the season, we will use team records to schedule competitive games accordingly.
5. How do you handle individual sign‐ups?
You may sign up individually or as small group and request to play with friends and teammates you know if you can’t put together an entire team. You will then be placed with kids of like age that are located on the same side of town and assigned a coach.
6. Why do the older teams cost more?
The U8-U11/12 bracket will only use 1 umpire. The older divisions may use 2 umpires. And, unfortunately the regulation 90 foot diamonds are more expensive to rent and harder to find which forces us to charge a bit more.
7. How do you handle age eligibility?
If you played on a 10 year old team this summer you will be allowed to play on a 10 year old team in our league and the same would apply for each age group. If you want to play up you may certainly do so weather you are a team or an individual. Seven year olds may sign up to play with the 8/9 year olds if ready for that level of competition.
8. How does the 12 playing up division work?
If you have just completed your season as a twelve year old it means that you are now moving to the 90 foot diamond next season. We feel it’s a great way for this class of kids to experience this change in our fall league before they have to do so next spring. Therefore if you choose to play in this division you would be playing against other 12 year old teams on the 90 foot diamond. If you are in this category and still wish to play on the smaller diamond you certainly may do so.
9. What happens if there are not enough kids on one team to play the game?
If this were to occur we would ask the team that has more players to either share a few players for that game or have the player who made last out play on defense for the other team. We strongly recommend that each team have 12 to 15 rostered players as there are usually a few conflicts and want to keep this situation to a minimum. We do ask that if you do sign up for our league that you would make every effort to participate each week so that the league would be more fun for all!
10. What if our games are rained out?
Every effort will be made to play our games each week. If the weather or field conditions simply will not allow us to do so, games will be made up on our rain date make‐up week. Please reserve that week on your calendar in advance as you very well may be making up some games that day. Should more than one week of cancellations occur due to circumstances beyond our control, we will assess the situation to see if it is possible (given schedules, park availability, weather, etc.) to make up more games; however, we cannot guarantee any games beyond our rain make-up date. No refunds will be given for loss of games due to excessive rain and/or circumstances beyond our control.
11. How do we know if the games had to be cancelled?
PLEASE always check the Fall Ball page of our website. We will always make a final decision by 8:00am Sunday morning if we are rained out or would post something ASAP if we were to get a downpour sometime during the day.
12. Who coaches the fall ball teams?
We rely on qualified parents to coach the Fall Ball teams that are made up of individually signed up players. When a parent signs their player up for Fall Ball, they have the option to select a box letting us know that they would like to be considered as a team coach. Coaches are then vetted by Bigler Sports with prior coaching experience weighing heavily in our coaching assignments. Selected coaches are given guidelines and instructions and will receive a refund for their player’s participation fees.
13. How are uniform/t‐shirts taken care of?
Each team is assigned a color and will be given a Bigler t‐shirt with a number on the back which should be worn to each game. Hats, pants and socks are to be taken care of individually as we do not provide these items. If a team wants to bring in or wear their own uniforms, they may do so, but we must be notified if this is the case. If, as a team, you would like to specify which color you want, you could do so but this would be handled on a first come first serve basis.
14. What are the rules for this league?
We follow WSYBL rules with a few exceptions: Bigler Sports Fall Ball Rules.
15. What is your refund policy?
A 90% refund will be given, no questions asked, until July 31. A 50% refund will be given from August 1st to our start date. Once the league has started, no refund will be given, unless extenuating circumstances occur, which will be taken up on a case by case basis.
16. How do you handle bad player behavior?
Players will be given a warning for bad behavior, and if behavior does not improve, we reserve the right to remove any player from the program without a refund.
17. What are game times?
Typical games times are 9:30AM, 11:30AM, 1:30PM, & 3:30PM. Teams play 2 games each game day. Games are often back-to-back. There may be a gap between games, but a team will never have more than a 1 game delay between their own games.
18. How many umpires will officiate games?
Due to the recent shortage of umpires, there will only be 1 umpire at U8 through U11/12 games. Every effort will be made to have 2 umpires at the U12 Playing Up and U13/14 games. U15/16 games will have 2 umpires.
