Rescheduling Games

Spring is different from Fall in many ways, but one problematic way is that rescheduling games in the Spring is a pain...  Spring schedules are already working around tournament availability, school holidays, facility closures, rain outs, and conflicts from a variety of other sports that might prefer that Soccer remain just a "fall activity" -- there just isn't very much room to accommodate coach requests.  Sorry, but unfortunately true.

The reality is that most PCSSL game reschedule requests fail.  We do appreciate how difficult it is to get dozens of families across a couple of teams to agree to a new date or time or location -- but that's only the first half of the work.  And the second half is full of people who have absolute veto power over any change: Field schedulers may not be able to secure permits for the new time/location, Referee admins may not be able to find qualified staff, PCSSL staff may determine a change affects fairness for one or more teams, and so on.

Remember every successful reschedule affects a minimum of nine and often a dozen different volunteers beyond everyone on both teams:

• Three referees planning to cover the original game

• Three referees needed to cover the new game.

• At least one referee scheduler to manage the old ref's gaps and the new ref's conflicts.

• At least one field scheduler to confirm field availability.

• PCSSL scheduler and/or director to ensure balance can be maintained and that the game is updated correctly in all the systems.

Any task is no longer trivial when it involves a dozen people, and asking anything of a dozen volunteers amounts to calling in at least one favor.

Suggestions

Some steps to offering a reschedule request with above average chances of success:

• Start early.  There are way more degrees of freedom with a month's notice than with a week's notice.  And a day's notice is rarely enough to change anything.

• Get your opponent to agree, and to detail what degrees of freedom they can manage to help work out good solutions -- for example, how flexible can they be regarding time and location.

• Do your homework with your regional staff.  

  • Learn how your fields are scheduled, and how they manage conflicts, so that you can determine not just that a desired slot is currently free but also recognize how likely it is that this slot will remain free.  Also learn what costs are involved, both for the time-slot you might leave empty and the new slot that you want to fill.

  • Learn how your referees are scheduled, and how your new day/time/location would be assigned.  Even if your team plans on providing all of your own referees, you may still run into an issue if your region was planning to use your game for an assessment or had some other expectation about your match.

  • Understand if your regional coaching staff has any plans affected by your game (trainer coverage, player or coach reviews, et al).

Reminders

Teams are asked explicitly to verify their availability before the season starts.  At the very least know the dates your local schools go on break.

Forfeits are strongly discouraged in this development league.  A forfeit is the only result where everybody loses.  [Note: every forfeit implies some twenty or more families lose more than 10% of their season, and it's not like they are getting any refunds from AYSO for the lost value...]