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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2011-06-07 - Parks and Rec Advisory Council Meeting Minutes MINUTES OF THE VILLAGE OF RYE BROOK PARKS AND RECREATION ADVISORY COUNCIL 938 KING STREET, RYE BROOK,NEW YORK 10573 June 7,2011 Convene Meeting: Chairman Marc Zimmerman called the meeting to order at 8:40 p.m. The following Members of the Council were present: Advisory Council Members: Chairman Marc Zimmerman, Ken Frankel, Kevin O'Neil Frank Carbone, Brian Funtleyder Glenn Brettschneider Absent Council Members: Jamie Schutzer, Sari Jablon, Adam Berman Recreation Department Member: Robert Bertolacci, Parks & Recreation Superintendent Carmella Swick, Sr. Office Assistant I. Minutes: Chairman Zimmerman asked for a motion to accept the May 3, 2011 Minutes. Committee Member O'Neil made a motion to accept the May 3, 2011 Minutes and Committee Member Frankel seconded the motion. The Minutes were approved and accepted. Committee Member Brettschneider abstained from voting. II. Public View Points: Alison Brown, resident of Rye Brook, stated that her 3rd grade daughter participated in the Rye Brook Girls 3rd and 4th grade softball program. Alison stated that she believed the program would be better if it included practices, as opposed to just playing games; and that the girls need to learn the basics of the game before they can play. She stated that some of the girls do not know how properly to catch or throw a ball, so it does not make a lot of sense to put them on the field to play a game. She suggested scheduling a half hour of practice before games; or scheduling one practice and one game per week. Alison stated that she understood that there presently is no girls varsity softball team and this is an opportunity to teach these girls the game so they can move up and eventually field a team. Committee Member O'Neil stated that there was a softball clinic for the girls. Alison said her daughter would be intimidated to go to a clinic because she did not know who would participate. The girls should learn that practices are part of learning the game and you can not just go to the field and play a game. Chairman Zimmerman said this issue falls into the Little League discussion that we need to have, and the suggestions also apply to the 1St and 2nd grade Rookie League program and beyond. We have so many good parents/coaches that we need to maximize the Little League program because it could be so much better than it is. Chairman Zimmerman suggested that many residents may decide that travel baseball is the only way to go if their kids are seriously interested in baseball. Chairman Zimmerman stated that he coaches an 8U travel baseball team of children of decent skill, but few of them play in Little League. Chairman Zimmerman said we should include in our Little League program the ability to teach kids and build on their skills. Committee Member Frankel agreed that we need to get more practices in baseball like we do for basketball. The first two weeks are practices for basketball and there is a practice before each game. However, the fields also were not ready for the coaches to hold practices because of the weather. Committee Member Carbone said that some of the parents feedback was, instead of having games during the week, specifically for the minor league, have drills and practices. A lot of parents expect us to take these kids and turn them into ball players. Committee Member Funtleyder said the girls are less motivated and are not interested beyond the rec program. Boys get together in the school yard or parks and will have a game, but the girls get together and talk and do whatever. Committee Member Carbone stated that we were able to get fields a couple years ago and have practices, now it is a lot harder to do with all the sports going on this year and the difficult weather. Coaches really did not have a chance to work with the kids. One of the problems lately is trouble fielding a team because kids stopped showing up either because they feel intimidated that they are not playing well or because they are just tired from playing in two different leagues and different sports. Chairman Zimmerman stated that the girls generally have two sports going which is Travel Soccer and Little League Softball. Some of the girls go after both sports and some only one sport. He stated that he believes we are doing them a disservice at the Minor League level by not building skills during that two year period of early development. Committee Member O'Neil said that we are all in agreement about having a combination of clinic and practices and showing these girls how to handle the ball during the drills. Committee Member Brettschneider stated that we coach the children but we can not really train them. It is up to the parents to get out there and take their children to Pro Swing, have a catch with them, teach them the basics and watch baseball games with them. He tells parents not to hand me your kids when he is coaching and expect him to teach them the basics of baseball. This should come from the parents. III. Superintendent's Report: a. Birthday Celebration Superintendent Bertolacci reported that the Rye Brook Birthday celebration will be held on June 18th from 12:OOpm to 4:OOpm. There are signs up for the birthday party in front of Rye Ridge Shopping Center and in front of Ridge Street School. Also, a post card with all information for the celebration was mailed out to all residents this week. Superintendent Bertolacci asked the Council Members to sign up with Carmella if interested in volunteering a few hours. The food will be served until 2:30pm. There will be a Chinese auction on site, D.J., rides and the Drum Circle from Ridge Street School will perform. Westchester Burger Co. is donating all the burgers and buns. They have a new business opening up where Frank's Steaks used to be in Washington Park Plaza. Also, WBC said they would be willing to do a barbeque at the end of the Little League season next year. Superintendent Bertolacci said Movie Night is this Friday. We will be showing The Karate Kid at Pine Ridge Park. If the forecast calls for rain, we will show the movie at Village Hill. IV. Old Business A. Little League Discussion i. Increasing Participation and Commitment Chairman Zimmerman stated that we will discuss Little League issues in detail after the season is over. Committee Member Carbone stated that he was shocked that 11 and 12 year olds didn't know that there was Little League. We struggled to get 48 kids to play in the Major League. Even with the enticement of a tournament to play in at the beginning of the summer, it still did not interest them to play. Committee Member Frankel said that the baseball tournament was not very well publicized. Little League is in the same ball park as basketball where you will see a lot of kids that did not play rec basketball in 4th grade, that will play in 5th grade so they can make the County Center team. If kids know there is a Little League District in baseball starting in 5th grade, we may get a better turnout. Chairman Zimmerman asked if we require kids to play both years in the major league in order to qualify for that tournament team. Committee Member Carbone stated that you can get a 9 to 10 year old team, 10 to I 1 year old team, and I I to 12 year old team in. They do that so kids do not play 3 years in the same bracket. We tried to get a 11/12 year old team in but there weren't enough kids, we only had 7 kids on the roster. We dropped it down to 10/11 year olds so we would have some Minor League kids playing and even now we still have trouble filling a roster. We have 10 or I I kids committed for a tournament team. Superintendent Bertolacci said too many kids do too many things in the summer. Travel Baseball numbers are up, our number could be up too. Superintendent Bertolacci said the solution is if we do some kind of Little League publication in January and let the parents know what is going on. We plan on entering these teams in a tournament, and have a Pitch, Hit and Run event. Superintendent Bertolacci suggested that we form a Little League sub-committee to deal with these issues specifically. Chairman Zimmerman asked if we had Minor and Major League playoffs. Committee Member Carbone said we had a Major League playoff that just ended. We did not have a Minor League play off because at this level it is still a learning experience and we do not keep score for the Minor League games. Superintendent Bertolacci said to keep in mind that Little League requires you to have a 12 game schedule for the season. Superintendent said that surveys for the baseball/softball will go out next week. Committee Member Carbone said there was a lack of coaches volunteering in the Major League. Minor League always has enough coaches. Superintendent Bertolacci said the issue was that in previous years coaches decided that their kids were not playing in the rec program. Chairman Zimmerman said that part of the issue is that once the top players stop playing in the Little League, then the number of registrations are down. These kids play Travel Baseball and they do not want to play with kids that are not as skilled because of the competition level or they are over-scheduled. Either way, we need to attract better numbers to better our Little League program. ii. Umpires and Coaches Superintendent Bertolacci said that Committee Member Schutzer stated in an e-mail that the coaches need to understand in the Minor League that the umpires are just learning how to umpire. Chairman Zimmerman said that from his observation, when the kids get up to bat, he would hear the umpire talking to and offering advice to the kids, which is a great thing. They are encouraging the kids to swing the bat. iii.Parents and Coaches Chairman Zimmerman said he heard of 2 incidents where parents called out the coaches on the field while the game in progress. There needs to be some consequence to the parents who step over the line. Coaches are volunteering their time and these parents should not be allowed to yell at the coaches at any time. Superintendent said we actually had some parent suspended from the park for one game when this type of incident occurred in the past. iv. Additional Skills Training Discussed already by having more practices and clinics. v. Playoffs Chairman Zimmerman said we should think about the possibility of having a playoff bracket for the Minor League. This would be an issue to discuss in the future. Committee Member Brettschneider suggested having a parent meeting before the Little League season begins. B. Maximizing Rec Programming Through Website Chairman Zimmerman asked how we can maximize our exposure to the community through our web site. Committee Member O'Neil asked who governs and funds the web site. The Blind Brook School is updating their web site and maybe there is a way to share with the school district. We could put a banner up announcing everything that is scheduled for that week and get the parents in the habit of checking the banner and not just for the cancellations. He suggested there are probably a whole host of other things that can be done with the web site. Superintendent Bertolacci stated that he has nothing to do with the home page that is on the web site, however, he has everything to do with the Recreation Department web site. Chairman Zimmerman said if it is a desire of the Rec Department, we can eliminate the phone rain out calls and replace them with electronic alerts. Superintendent Bertolacci stated that we are developing a Facebook site. This will enable the rec department to blast out e-mails with information about the schedule for that day or week and other information. Also, we can put a ticker that goes across the Rec Department page stating the games are cancelled tonight due to the weather or Movie Night has been moved to Village Hall due to inclement weather, etc. Superintendent Bertolacci said he had discussions today and last week with the technology committee regarding the rec web site. V. New Business a. Men's Softball League Chairman Zimmerman said there have been discussions about having a Rye Brook resident division and a non-Rye Brook resident division for the Men's Softball program. Chairman Zimmerman raised the question of why some of the true recreational teams are playing teams with multiple players who are capable of hitting the ball over the fence. As long time RB softball players are getting older, less skilled and less aggressive, the guys pitching and playing 3rd base don't want to play there against highly skilled, younger and more aggressive players. There is going to be an injury at some point and some of the older guys on the old Rye Brook teams do not want to play the non-Rye Brook teams because it is not fun for them to do so. Superintendent Bertolacci said in the past we had an A League and a B League. The A League used a lesser ball and when the two teams crossed over we used the lesser ball. Chairman Zimmerman stated that we will need to revisit this issue. b. 10— 11 Year Old District 20 Baseball Tournament Committee Member Carbone stated that we have put together a 10/11 year old team. The first game is July 91h at 1:00pm in White Plains. We are guaranteed 2 games. The next game is Monday, July 11th. If you win both games, you go to the winners bracket and you keep going until you lose 2 games. If you lose one game you are in the loser's bracket and you keep playing, but once you lose another game you are out. The kids that are on the team are very excited to play. He suggested trying to get some pictures in the Westmore News and maybe kids who did not play this year will see the opportunity to do this program next year. Cmmittee Member Carbone suggested that the dates of the tournament go out to the Travel Baseball Club to avoid any possible conflicts. VI. Adjournment Chairman Zimmerman asked for a motion to adjourn the meeting. Committee Member O'Neil made a motion to adjourn the meeting and Committee Member Brettschneider seconded the motion. The meeting adjourned at 9:50pm. The next meeting of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee will meet on July 12, 2011 at 8:00pm. Minutes prepared by Carmella Swick.