[ Post a Response | East Tennessee Softball ]
Posted by Tennessee NSA on 10/28/2009, 6:18 pm
204.116.136.152
To All Teams, Sponsors, Coaches & Players,
As most of you know by now, there have been some things happen the last few months in regards to ISA/NSA with the directors, umpires and tournaments in Tennessee. We hope to shed some light on the situation and answer any questions about what has happened and why. We would also like to talk about the bright future of NSA in
Tennessee with everything that will now be available, from quality tournaments to the best group of directors and umpires ever assembled in one association. This will be long and we apologize for that in advance, but there are several questions to be answered.
First of all, yes it is true. Twig, Tim, Wildbill & Pheasy have made the move from ISA to NSA. We are also very pleased to say that most of our umpires and established tournaments will be coming as well. We will be adding all of this to what NSA already has to offer. So you can imagine the product that we intend on putting on the field and it will be unlike anything that has ever been offered before by an association. Yet still, this was a very hard decision for us to make as we loved ISA and have worked very hard over the last few years to build it to what it was. ISA gave each of us an opportunity to get involved with the game that we love and to develop a lot of the friendships that we have made over the years. We will be forever grateful for that. So why leave ISA? Well, like we said, it was a very difficult decision to make and it has taken us several months to finally make it. We just simply feel that we can make a bigger difference in adult softball in Tennessee with this move. No, NSA is not buying ISA. No, it wasn’t for more money (as evidence of Tim going from a state director to area director.) And no, it wasn’t because we were replaced by other people. We just saw an opportunity to get on the same page with some of the best directors, umpires, and tournaments in the state. Regardless of those 3 letters on the tournaments that we host, be it NSA or ISA in the past, this is an opportunity to put some of the hardest working people in softball on the same team. Now obviously, there is one or two out there that didn’t want to make the move, and we respect their decision. We still feel great about the team that has been assembled and are very excited to be working together with a common goal. It is exactly like when two softball teams decide to combine when they feel like they are making a move to better their play. That is what we are going to do. We are going to better our play by putting a more quality product out on the field. We hope to see the benefit because that is what we set out to do, but more importantly, the teams are the ones that will benefit the most. This group of people that now represents Tennessee NSA is dedicated and determined to make a difference and you will see that starting now. No disrespect to anyone that was involved with Tennessee NSA in the past, but things will change from what the teams have grown accustomed to. We will look forward to tackling the biggest problems: Like the huge prize packages that are being offered every weekend that makes the tournaments higher, focusing on keeping the entry fees down as much as possible, offering tournaments across the state to cut down on as much traveling, the ongoing classification confusion, helping teams host tournaments to make money because sponsorships are so hard to come across now, and just the betterment and quality of our tournaments in general. We are very excited; as we hope you are and will be with what NSA has to offer now.
From this point forward, Tennessee NSA will be working as hard now as we do during the summer. We are continually putting the pieces together for next year and will be attending the NSA National Convention in Panama City the first week of November. More importantly to you, that is where we will lobby for some rule changes. And yes, Tennessee NSA will lobby to get the 1 & 1, no extra foul changed. After coming back from Florida, we will be doing conference calls in order to get the classification list updated from last year’s move ups and results. We are going to put this out preseason so that teams know how to build their teams if they plan on making changes. This list will be posted by November 13th, and their will be more details on this below. Then we will have our state meeting in December where we will conduct business and also do our master schedule for 2010. After the holidays our umpires will start their training under the guidance of the Tennessee NSA State UIC, Randy Holt, as well as the other local UIC’s. And then of course we will start the season off with the first big tournament of many, the Bash for Cash at the new Summitt in Chattanooga.
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So, we would like to take this time to introduce to you our staff for the 2010 season. Please note that this is subject to change. Any and all questions regarding adult slow pitch softball should go to the state director via email at tnnsa@yahoo.com.
Connie Jennette (TN NSA State Director) – Nashville, Mt. Juliet, Gallatin
ET “Pheasy” Bradley (TN NSA Area Director) – Lewisburg, Fayetteville, Lawrenceburg, Columbia, McMinnville, Murfreesboro, Winchester
Randy Holt - (TN NSA State UIC)
Jimmy Brown – (TN NSA Asst State UIC)
Tim Coley (TN NSA Asst State Director) – Nashville, Mt. Juliet, Gallatin, Lafayette, Cookeville
Darrell Austin (TN NSA Area Director) – McMinnville, Centertown
Jerry Smith (TN NSA Area Director) – Nashville, Mt. Juliet, Gallatin
AC Pinckley (TN NSA Area Director) – Nashville, Mt. Juliet, Gallatin
Chuck McGlasson (TN NSA Area Director) – Memphis, Bartlett, Jackson
Mark “Twig” Ogletree (TN NSA/BPA Director of Operations) – Cookeville, Crossville, Jackson
Billy “Wildbill” Knight (TN NSA Area Director) – Cleveland, Chattanooga, Athens
Donald Ramsey (TN NSA Area Director) – Chattanooga, Cleveland, Athens
Perry Pruitt (TN NSA Area Director) – Knoxville, Oak Ridge, Maryvile
Bobby Wilson (TN NSA Area Director) – Morristown, Greeneville,
Johnson City
There will also be Tournament Directors approved through the state office periodically throughout the year. In most cases it will be a representative of a team who wishes to throw a tournament to raise money for their team. Any team wishing to do that, needs to contact their area director for more information on this.
Dustin “Deez” Higgs - (Tournament Director)
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TOPICS OF INTEREST FOR THE TEAMS
CLASSIFICATION – After the list comes out, you will be required to play in that class. You can appeal, but you must play in two NSA qualifiers before being eligible to move down. If your team decides to split, please take notice of the rules when building your team. For an example, any team that is classed D can have up to two players on there team that played C (1 class higher). If they have 3, they will be moved up and will have to play in the two NSA qualifiers before being eligible to be moved down, in which that case will be reviewed by the NSA classification committee. Likewise any team can be moved up after two NSA qualifiers. Also, no player can drop more than one class from one year to the next.
B CLASS – Yes, we will continue to move teams up. As for the B teams, don’t worry, you will have places to play. We will have places to play in B/C combo tournaments locally and there are numerous B and above tournaments this year with NSA to participate in. There are two that will not be named at this time but some of them will be the Pic-O-Dixie, Mayfield Southern Showcase, Bash for Cash, Super World B/C NIT, as well as a couple of other ones that are in the works or cannot be named at this time.
PRICE OF TOURNAMENTS – We will focus on trying to make the tournaments as cheap as possible for all the teams in 2010. Some tournaments will not take this approach like for instance the Bash for Cash because obviously, the prize money has to come from somewhere, but we think you will see the difference. A lot of tournaments in the past that gave away big prize packages will scale back somewhat in order to make it easier on the teams in terms of affordability.
TEAM INSURANCE – We will focus on pushing the team insurance to all the teams that would be interested in that. It really is a no-brainer for less than $10 a player for the calendar year that would serve as a secondary insurance or a primary insurance if you didn’t have any insurance. More to come on this later.
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There is so much more that we will be touching on over the course of the next few months in regards to next season. Please stay tuned as we bring you more soon. We will post this message again in a couple of weeks before the move ups so that people can view it that may not have seen it before it moved to page 2.
Thanks for playing TN NSA!!!
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