VYBO Addresses Prep Team

Dear Parents via Vernon Patch,

I am writing this letter on behalf of recent efforts of the Vernon Youth Baseball Organization. 

As many of you may know, it is the goal of VYBO to provide opportunity and options for players aged 13 to 17 in the town of Vernon to play the great game of baseball.

In recent years, our objective has been to field teams at different competitive levels including a community based Babe Ruth program (emphasis on building teamwork and enjoyment while building on player’s existing skillset) and competitive travel teams in cooperation/participation with the Jaycee Baseball League of Greater Hartford (aka: Jaycee-TDBank) one of the largest independent baseball programs in the United States. It is our objective to field teams at each of their respective levels: Prep (13 year old), Junior (14 to 15) as well as Senior (16 to 19).  We have also been proactive, in conjunction with the local Post 14 American Legion Program, assisting in fielding a Jr. American Legion (17-u) team.

While it is not our policy to address rumor or innuendo, it has come to our board's attention via concerned members/affiliates that efforts to field, in particular, the Jaycee-TDBank Prep (13) team have come under scrutiny. 

This letter is to address any claims that VYBO has no interest or desire to field a team in this age bracket. VYBO’s Board of Directors wants to express its desire to field and maintain ANY AND ALL of the teams that we support. 

In particular, we believe that to field the Prep team provides a great opportunity/experience for those players as they learn to transition from the Little League field. 

As you may have seen we have advertised/promoted all of our teams in a fair and equitable manner. It has been our hope that we would have interest in the Prep team and, until recently had been assured by those closely involved in board discussions that there was a commitment of a minimum of 15 players that were interested in trying out for our VYBO Prep team. We were hopeful to see these numbers come to fruition during our ongoing registration events. 

Unfortunately, those that were asserting that commitment have since resigned their membership from our organization and have not provided any further responses to questions raised.

I ask each of you reading this to consider that VYBO hopes to support that Prep team (as well as the other levels of baseball in town) in a manner that allows you, as the parent/guardian of those players involved, to see that the services we provide in a manner as reasonable and unbiased as possible. Examples of recent practices:

• We open our managerial positions to applications and board review and make every effort to provide the best coaching available.

• We involve the Player Agent in all tryouts to make sure that there is no unfair advantage to any one player or coach. 

It is also our goal to provide players access to play in the age appropriate league where they will get the most benefit and, most importantly, their greatest opportunity to succeed. This particular practice requires that the managers of travel teams with overlapping age ranges work together to make sure that players have the advantage of the greatest possible playing time. We make every possible effort to field teams in a transparently fair process so that you can expect the most of our volunteer organization.

Due to the community splitting potential of such misunderstandings or ill-founded claims, it is my hope to clarify and confirm that VYBO has every intention to field the Prep travel team. As long as we have registrations enough to support this as well as any of our teams you have our commitment that we will field each and every one of them to the best of our abilities.

I ask any of you that may have questions/concerns to contact me directly at 860-872-0455 or feel free to attend our Board Meetings which are open to the public.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Dave Glidden
President
Vernon Youth Baseball Organization