Cottage Grove Baseball

Good evening, I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to give you an update on CGAA Baseball. You are receiving this message as you are a member of our online network, if you no longer are a member please log-in and opt out.

We have completed the majority of our season and with that, we begin planning for the 2012 season to begin. We will be having a traveling try-out planning meeting on Wednesday November 2^nd at 6:00pm at the Youth Services Bureau Building, in the main conference room. We will be setting the dates for the 2013 try-outs(taking place in the fall of 2012) and reviewing the try-out process. We welcome members to attend and / or submit thoughtful suggestions for consideration to improve the process (they can be submitted to dan@cgbaseball.org). If you have an idea for the meeting please submit it via email prior to the meeting so that we can put it on the agenda. We have seating for about 40 people and it will be on a first come, first serve basis.

Traveling player registration will begin in the next week. In-house registrations will begin the last week of January. This year all players’ fees will remain the same. We will be adding tournament fees into the online registration for all traveling baseball players. We will be collecting $90.00 (the cost of three tournaments) for tournament fees in the registrations, as well. These can be refunded if a team fundraises or is not in three tournaments. When you register for traveling baseball, you will have an option to pay all at once or in three installments. The three installments will be $50.00 at the time of early registration, an additional $192.00 ($50+$192 is equal to last year’s traveling fees)will be billed on February 28^th, 2012, and a final billing of $90.00(tournament fees) will be on April 30^th. When you register, you will be authorizing all transactions on those dates and they will automatically be billed. We are attempting to reduce the amount of money collecting required by coaches during and following the season.

I would also like to take a moment and highlight some successful projects that were undertaken and completed this year. At Hamlet field, we covered all the benches with permanent roofs, which look great and gives the field a great feel. We covered the benches at Woodridge North Field. This fall I was able to create a partnership with the city to add concrete dugouts to the large field at Woodridge; the park looks great and a special thanks to Zac Dockter (City administrator) and Greg Niles (Parks Foreman). We intend to continue to look for projects to improve our facilities.

We will be beginning winter workouts on December 4^th, at the Park Activity Center. All players who attended tryouts for traveling baseball are invited to attend. Please check out the winter work-out section on the web page. We will be increasing the intensity of CGAA traveling baseball; we will be looking to increase the effort and hard work to raise the level of competitive baseball in our community!

Again, thanks to all the volunteers that make baseball possible in our community. Reminder, we are looking for a new director of communication. The commitment is one weekend a month (meeting on Sunday evening) and a few spread out projects. If you are able and interested, please give me a call and I can explain.

Thanks,

Dan Harrison

CGAA Baseball President

As the season moves into off-season training, I like to look back and learn from the past season. We had an excellent year and are looking forward to a great year next year. 

Baseball is a failure sport, the greatest batters in the work are out more than 6 out of ten at bats. We recognize your errors and your outs and even track them over a year; not cruel just honest in a time where that's rare. You're never a failure as long as you keep getting back up and working to improve. I believe baseball teaches you that you must work to succeed, Albert Pujols hits hundreds of balls per week off of a tee, the hard work pays off in a World Series Championship.

If your son has a desire to be successful at baseball, take the time to teach him the value of hard work. Demonstrate it by learning to coach his skills and bring him to experts to enhance your teaching of those skills. Work with him to set goals and then set the hard work it will take to achieve them. The great thing about being great, is that it is really really hard; the masses never reach great, not because they can't, but because they are unwilling to accept the fact and do the work it takes to achieve this.

If your child is overlooked for a team, or a coach is not filling your childs needs, you have choices to make. Do we give up? I hope not; use it as an opportunity to work harder than anyone else. In the end the lessons taught through those who fail and continue to work and never give up are the most valuable lessons they will learn in life.

As we head into the off-season and into next year, I would like to challenge all of the Cottage Grove Athletic family to raise the standards for themself. Don't point at others, look inside and say what can I do to get better. If someone says you are not good enough, they may be right. Let's stop being offended and do the work it takes to prove them wrong.

CG baseball is going to do everything we can to provide opportunities for those who want to improve to do so. The critical thing to remember is that you can be shown the right technique and told what to do, but the only person who can make you great is you.

Make yourself great!

Dan Harrison

President CgBaseball

dan@cgbaseball.org

459-0110

We are reminding people that many companies offer funds to donate to non-profit organizations such as CGAA.  Please be aware of these opportunities and support CGAA.