WYSL teams
Here is a link to download the PRELIMINARY Schedule for the Westchester Youth Soccer League Fall 2010 season. I am sorry it is a few days late and that the league website didn’t reflect the delay. You’ll still get plenty of time to review and comment. The extra time was needed.
As usual, please warn all your teams that they should NOT make final plans based on this schedule. I expect a couple hundred changes - including some changes in home games and times. This is PRELIMINARY. Let’s make sure everyone understands. Humans are good at imagining what they want despite reality. After the Final Schedule is posted, please trash any copies you have of this preliminary schedule.
Many of you have been through this drill but please read this as a reminder. For the first timers, here goes:
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Your job is to check the schedule and within a week - by Monday the 30th of August - find and tell me about the mistakes I’ve made. I’m sure there are more than a few. Too many keystrokes not to have a typo or two and my eyes are known to glaze over now at then. There will also be changes to adjust field usage and correct for last minute "problems". If you have suggestions for better field use or to deal with a local problem. Tell me. I tried to honor many of the new and complex field and team placement requests. Please check me. This is a manual process.
Regarding schedule requests, don’t send any new ones no matter how heartfelt or important. (Coach coordination, wedding day, problem with early games, etc.) It’s too late. All requests each season must reach me before the preliminary is done. Remember earlier next year. The league has a new process in place for those major school and religious events which were unanticipated. Take a look at the new regulations.
PLEASE, if you or your club gave me a request and I missed it or messed it up, TELL ME! I spend almost as much time trying to meet all the requests as I do on the schedule. I want them to be as good as possible. Don’t suffer in silence if you think I made a mistake - especially on the coach coordinations and specific day requests which I know can be quite important. If there’s a reason I couldn’t manage it, I would rather explain.
General requests (prefer early, games after 2pm if possible, etc.) were often NOT honored. It’s not possible. Especially when one team says "prefer early" and the other team says "prefer late" %20Wink.png)
I’m stuck. If I generally got your request right, be happy. I apologize in advance to some older teams who wanted later games. It just doesn’t work. To use fall fields and fall daylight, older teams have to be prepared to play earlier.
If your teams had a coach coordination, I had to ignore most of the "pref after 2, prefer early" type requests. It’s hard enough to get your coach to the game without trying to adjust for when your team and your coach’s other team would like to play. Older teams have to be ready to play at any time during the day. I understand (as a former manager) how hard it is to get the kids to early games. But we have very little field space and too many requests to be so particular. Over 25% of all league teams have a coordinated coach. Add to that another 10% of teams which had special requests. (Many teams had both.) It’s a big interlocking puzzle.
Very often your coach will have barely enough time to get from the end of one game to the start of the next. (half an hour or 45 minutes.) The league is geographically bigger so the problem is harder. She or he will often not have time for a post game or pre-game talk. That is the best I can do. Sorry. I use Google Maps. If I haven’t allowed enough time to get "from whistle to whistle", let me know. But be sure to check your GoogleMaps distance first.
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Please check for your team, see if all the games are there, check the fields. Note any gaps or overlaps in the schedule. See if there are any singletons. Check the requests.
PREMIER Teams and clubs. Please be especially careful checking your Sunday schedule including any coach coordinations. The erratic nature of your schedule makes it tough for me to keep track. Did I remember all your games? I expect to have additional Tri-League games requests soon and in November high school mini-season games to add in.
Everyone, send your responses to me by email as you see things. You don’t have to wait. Correction is a rolling process. Often we’ll need to talk about the issues.
The final schedule will be done in the middle of next week (around the 1st) and handed out at the league meeting on September 7 at Hommocks School. The electronic version will go live after the meeting.
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Some divisions have 10 game schedules. Some have 9. One 5 team division has 8 games in their schedule (a perfect double round-robin). There are very few games on the last week of the season. If you don’t have a game on November 21st, it’s because you are playing a shorter schedule.
There are 555 teams (so far including 34 playing some form of premier league). The schedule includes 2601 games and 81 "byes". There are only 2 "TBS" games for teams in divisions with an odd number of players to make up for some of the byes. There are so few TBS games this season because most teams prefer to play only on Sunday and scheduling TBS games has been a continuing problem. So the league opted for a shorter season without TBS games. We think that’s better all around. Teams that miss the extra games on Saturday can play friendlies.
There are a couple of TBA games when neither team had enough field space for the game. If you can find a field, tell me. Get them scheduled and played sometime. There is already one postponement for an away state cup game.
The number of home and away games is pretty balanced. But some clubs with tight field space have fewer home games. In a 9 game schedule you’ll have either 4 or 5 home games. I’m sorry that a few teams are short a home game or two.
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I will post a copy of this Preliminary Schedule on the web as soon as I can as an excel spread. (Maybe this evening). When the Final schedule is uploaded to the league website, it will be available division by division or club by club.
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We need your help to clean up this schedule. There’s nothing better than dozens of eyes looking for mistakes. It takes a community to produce a good soccer schedule. This is a collective effort so the families will have the best start for planning their season. Every mistake you catch saves precious time and helps getting the kids on the field. I appreciate the help.
Thanks much!
Terry Benson
WYSL Scheduler
