May 2010

I had a few parents contact me about our pick-up policy I emailed around the other day, mostly for clarification .. but it reminded me that I have not sent out a ‘Hawk Talk’ email lately … so here it is… 

A couple points to clarify – this has been a policy of the Hawks for 3 years now. Same for our rule that players cannot play other sports in June/ July (soccer, rec league, whatever) … again, both have been in place for 3 years now. Essentially, when your team plays their first official tourney – from that point forward your DD’s season is on!

We have made exceptions – just like this coming weekend. A coach, a very good friend of the org called and needs help with a couple players– we agreed to send a couple down to him.. it makes good sense to help out others.

It is not really about preventing recruiting .. that is going to happen regardless and families are going to jump for other teams to the ‘hoped’ betterment of their DD’s situation .. I understand that and am fine with it. This rule will have no affect on that happening. We determined 3 yrs ago that our teams, players and families invest too much into their team from Aug-March to put the team’s success at risk due to injury from a player subbing with another team, other sports etc. for the June/July fastpitch season.  Frankly, we play pretty much every weekend from June/July and the 1 or at most 2 weekends that a team is off we would hope the families will take a needed vacation to allow the player to recharge or for the team to at least hold a practice over the weekend they are off to stay sharp.

But, the real core of what we are building here is this. We are building an organization that makes a commitment to families to provide them with the best training opportunities, coaching, training facilities, practice and game facilities, uniforms, family support, and overall fastpitch experience available in the Midwest. In return we ask for some degree of understanding that the good of the TEAM comes over the needs of the individual. It goes to the core of what is wrong with our society today – it is such a “me” society out there.. we are trying to build something here that says to families that we will provide for your daughter the overall best environment you can get at the lowest fee to you and your family. We have 3 teams right now, 2 10u and my 11u that are arguably in the top 10 in Ohio teams, I expect our  16u and maybe our 14u teams to be there as well. We are proving every day that you can build within, do it right, and win as well.

Fastpitch will always have mercenaries out there, girls that float from team, team and sub’ing to sub’ing. As good as they may be, they are not players we want into or associated with the Hawks. They will hurt the team as much as they might help it – and will foster the high mid-season turnover that results from the baggage they carry with them. We believe that if you treat folks right, provide them with value, they will in turn be loyal and supportive of your efforts. It is amazing how many short “thank you” – emails I get every week from our families letting me know we are doing it right and that they are so glad their DD is with our organization. My goal is to make this organization better every single day to the benefit of us all.

We have proven that you can build a team from the ground up. My team has 7 of the original players we started with, they are as good an 11u team as you will find, and we have never cut any player from the team. We did have a couple girls not come back this year from last year’s team – they were not starters and rather than work themselves into a starting role their choose to go to other teams to play. Again, that happens, it is a part of Fastpitch.

What I don’t accept is that just because the world of FP has been what it has been, we can’t do better by doing different. Just last night I had 2 coaches from Columbus  contact me about us starting the ‘Central Ohio Hawks’ ..why? They see what we are doing, their existing organizations are just a collection of teams with no real overall vision for the organization, and they want to be a part of something different and better.

Yesterday an ASA commissioner called me – he has contacted dozens of teams in SWO and he wanted to let me know that the Hawks were by far the most organized, structured and visionary of all the ones he has met with. He choose the Hawks to present with him in front of a large ‘local’ company last night that we anticipate will sponsor us and our tourney’s to the tune of $6,000 or so this year (I am waiting to hear back from them today) – why? Because he too sees the difference. He told me he had org’s that would not even call him back and did not even have a ‘head’ person to work with.

With all that said, we will have growing pains and girls leave for various reasons. What I would ask each parent to do is to take a long term approach to your DD’s FP career. I have a player on my team that for the first 2 years was a minor role player – but she worked her tail off since day one. This winter it all began to come together for her. She is now ‘smoking’ the ball, her arm strength has doubled and she has raised her game to the point that she will be playing much more and is a ‘key’ player on a Ohio top ten team…  hard work, dedication and patience won out.

Lastly, please know that we value every families input and contributions to the Hawks. Trust me in when I say that we are building something here that is different and better than anything else out there in Fastpitch. We are all fortunate to be a part of it.

Sincerely,
Doug Lenos

President, Ohio Hawks FASTPITCH

PS. While I was typing this and about to hit send another coach in Columbus called me to talk about our plans for Columbus … amazing!

Email sent May 3rd on playing for other teams while in season

I wanted to remind everyone that from this point forward Hawks players are not permitted to play with other organizations/teams as substitutes.  There are 2 main reasons why this is an organization rule – the first being that we want to avoid player injury and the second is that if not handled properly, a player rostered and not released or mistakenly rostered can lose their eligibility for the season.

This weekend we had a team ask for a couple players due to an emergency shortage. Lester from the Static was kind enough to loan me one of his best players for an indoor tourney and he and Static have always been a friend of the Hawks – they play in all our tourney’s and support us online at OFC. Les called me and had we not been playing I would have loaned him a few girls from my team. I asked him to call Jay and a couple of Jay’s girls are going to play with his team this weekend.

As a rule – as an organization – we don’t want our players playing with other teams while in season (April – July) – to prevent possible injury etc to our girls and avoid sanctioning issues mentioned above. But in this case, we made an exemption to help a good coach and friend of the org out…             

It does take board approval for our players to substitute and only with coach approval prior .. but please bear in mind that we will almost always decline the request.