SYA Little League Baseball and Softball is an organization designed to build good citizens. It is a program of leadership, preparing today's youth to be tomorrow's leaders. SYA Little League relies on a dedicated legion of adult volunteers to help ensure that your organization remains structured and runs smoothly. We are always looking for responsible and enthusiastic individuals to support and coordinate Little League events and activities. Anyone can volunteer!

SYA Little League is a volunteer organization. We need all parents to be able to volunteer some time during the course of the season to support not only your child’s team, but SYA Little League as an organization. Yes, we do realize that there are parents with extenuating circumstances that prevent them from volunteering. They can choose to opt-out of this support by paying an additional $50 fee per family which will exempt them from all volunteer activities. If you are registering multiple players, you must register them at the same time to avoid being charged again for the opt-out fee. Note that we will track all volunteer activities and who has participated to help ensure everyone gets their chance to participate.

What are the volunteer roles for SYA Little League?

A volunteer role is a position, task, or activity that directly benefits SYA Little League organization. This does not include activities such as Team Parent, Team Snacks or Team Pre/Post game preparation or clean-up. These activities are team focused and will be coordinated through the Team Manager. Team Managers will also ensure each parent understands that these activities are the responsibility of ALL parents on individual teams. SYA Little League highly encourages all parents to consider volunteering for these activities in order for a team to have a successful season.

For SYA Little League, there are a wide range of volunteer opportunities besides some of the obvious:

Field Maintenance and other Volunteer Opportunities:

SYA Little League maintains approximately 25 fields used by our teams for practices and games. We do not have the ability to pay outside resources to maintain all these fields to keep them safe and playable, so we need to rely on volunteers. We have field days in the beginning of the season to prepare fields after the winter. During the season, teams are responsible for pre/post practice/game field maintenance activities, which are coordinated through the team manager. If we don’t maintain fields, they become unfit and possibly unsafe for play. We have field coordinators on the Board of Directors that will work with Managers and teams on field expectations. Emails are sent out prior to these events with specifics on the goals for the event.

Besides fields, we have opportunities that include:

• Winter Clinic check-in
• Player Tryout check-in, monitoring players
• Opening Day Ceremony – various
• Closing Ceremony – various
• Any SYA Little League Event – Just ask your manager how you can help!

Team Manager, Assistant Coaches:

These adults are responsible to the league for their team, practices, games, and other team events as they determine. SYA Little League provides them the information, training, and equipment as needed for their experience to be outstanding, hopefully translating to all their players and families. There are some conditions required for these roles to include: online concussion training, background checks, attend league required meetings, Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) training, participate in team selections (tryouts, drafts, etc), identify your team volunteers to support you in your role as a Manager, Umpire at least 2 player pitch games during the season (player pitch coaches only), and provide feedback to the league.

Umpires:

SYA Little League uses both adults and minors (age 12 and older) to umpire games at the player pitch level in baseball and softball. Individuals who volunteer must attend Umpire training, both rules and on field, prior to the start of the season. We offer several dates for each of these and they will be announced as we get closer to the start of the season. Adults can be paid or volunteers with minors and any person attending school, including college, are eligible for pay. Parents can volunteer to become an Umpire as we will provide the training. If a parent signs up and attends Umpire training and schedules games, they can be eligible for a refund of one of their child’s registration fees after 8 games umpired.

Snack Shack:

While our Snack Shack does generate income for the league to help offset registration fees and other expenses, we need volunteers to staff these. While games are great to have, the Snack Shacks add a value to families in a hurry and provide further community feel and involvement in Little League. We can provide basic training as necessary. Depending on the time/date the Snack Shack is open, we may need up to 4 adults to staff the facility. Shifts are usually about 2 hours and can be made by a team or by a group of individuals or by a single parent (with others). We hope that all parents volunteer for at least two of these shifts each season.

If you are registering for a position as Team Manager, Assistant Coach, Umpire, or Snack Shack, you will be required to have a mandatory background check completed BEFORE you will be permitted to be assigned to a team and participate with that team. This is required on a calendar basis by Little League, regardless of other SYA programs. You will receive an email from JDP, our background check vendor, with the subject line similar to: SYA LITTLE LEAGUE Background Questionnaire Notification, to complete this package. For some, these emails may end up in your junk/spam folder so please keep an eye on them after you register as a volunteer. This must be completed before you will be allowed to participate as requested.

Volunteer Today!

Questions? Just ask - commissioner@syabaseball.org