Athletics

We have accelerated the start of the Minors Jr. and Minors playoffs. They are now commencing on Sunday, May 16; check the schedule below to see your first round games. The seedings were completely random. The playoffs will be double elimination, unless rain gets in the way of finishing before school lets out, in which case we will revert to single elimination.

Many of you have uploaded pictures for your team's web site, and that is great; kids love to see themselves playing baseball, as do their parents and other fans.

However, the number and size of pictures uploaded already have used up a large percentage of our available memory. Therefore, we must ask you to make sure your image is optimized for the web, or at 72 dots per inch (dpi) . If you are using a digital camera or a scanner, you should have some kind of imaging software that came with it that will adjust the DPI size for
you. You will need to edit and size the images before uploading them to
your site. 300 dpi will create a very large graphic file even if the image is small. For example a 1 x 1 inch image at 300dpi would be about 270k. A 1 x 1 inch image at 72 dpi would be only about 4.3k (big difference).

Please take the time to edit your uploaded pictures so there will be more room for everyone. Otherwise, we will have to "clean house" before too long, and we don't want to do that!

All-Star ballots have now been distributed to all teams in Minors, Majors, Juniors and Seniors. Each team manager has been given detailed instructions on how his or her team should vote. The ballots must be returned by each team manager to his or her player agent NO LATER THAN FRIDAY MAY 14, 2004. Player agents will tabulate the results shortly thereafter. Winners will be announced and presented with All-Star Pins and certificates at our year end party.

Nominations are now being taken for NMOBLL and Little League awards. NMBOLL families were recently mailed nomination forms, and they are also available in the handout below. To continue our tradition from last year, each division will honor one Coach of the Year. There is no nomination form for this award, but the award will be based in large part on the evaluation forms we receive from parents and players alike, as well as comments from our umpires and player agents. In addition, we will have several new awards this year. We will be giving an award to a Volunteer of the Year, and to a Good Sport of the Year. The Volunteer award is given to the wolunteer who has best demonstrated a "spirited and dedicated volunteer effort toward the development of children participating in Little League Baseball." The Good Sport award will be presented to the player, coach, or other member who "exemplifies the 'GOOD SPORT' attitude, team spirit, and adherence to the principles of fair play and sportsmanship associated with Little League Baseball." In addition to submitting nominations for the Volunteer and Good Sport Awards to NMBOLL (no later than May 14!!), they may also be submitted to Little League International prior to June 1. Players can also submit to Little League International a nomination of their own moms for Little League Mom of the Year. (NMBOLL does not issue a Mom of the Year award, because ALL of our Moms are Moms of the Year!) Families can also submit nominations in the Ace/Little League "Helpful Hero" Contest. Again, all nomination forms are in the handout below. Good luck, everyone!