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Cottage Grove Baseball

    To Our Baseball Community,

    The City of Cottage Grove’s Park and Recreation Department has requested that the members of our baseball association adhere to the announcement made by Governor Walz during his May 20th press conference in which he mentioned that youth sports practice with groups no larger than 10 people. The Cottage Grove Baseball Board is asking everyone to adhere to this policy until further notice in an attempt to maintain a positive working relationship with the city as well as providing a safe environment for our players and coaches.

    After much deliberation, unfortunately the CGAA Baseball Board has made the decision to cancel the In-House baseball season due to safety concerns relating to the COVID-19 virus. We are still hopeful that we will be able to salvage a modified traveling baseball season. In order to make this happen we need everyone’s cooperation in following these rules so we do not find ourselves in a situation where the governor or city feels they need to enforce more restrictions and we lose the entire season.

    May 18th 2020 Update from CGAA President Dan Harrison

    Greetings CGAA members,

    We certainly are having the strangest season of youth sports in our existence. I hope the current COVID pandemic has spared you and your families hardship.
     
    I would like to take a moment to share where we are with current seasons, review how we operate as an association, and give you some explanation of where we are headed.
     
    We are making every effort to both prepare for our seasons (delay) and follow the Governor’s mandates to mitigate the COVID crisis. Our directors are some of the most passionate people about their sports and are doing their best to maintain hope for spring/summer seasons. We realize that the uncertainty is difficult for each of you, as well, and are working on options where decisions have not yet been pushed on us by a sport's external governing body. For those whose seasons have been cancelled, I am deeply saddened, but offer the hope that we will get through this and have future opportunities for you. For those of you in limbo, please be patient, and we will continue to be prepared if we are able to salvage some season.
     
    There may be differences in our fall and winter sports, as well, and we are already working to prepare so that we might be able to best provide that needed opportunity. 
     
    WHERE WE ARE FINANCIALLY AND HOW WE ARE WORKING WITH REFUNDS:
     
    CGAA is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, we are run by volunteers who receive a small stipend for their time. As a non-profit, we have certain costs that are fixed and we incur periodically, such as rent, annual audits, insurance, and utility costs. These costs have been offset by proceeds from our charitable gambling operations, as well as from program registrations. (CGAA charitable gambling is currently a non-essential business and therefore is temporarily out of business and will most likely come back slowly as our partner businesses reopen.) Our divisions pay their portion of these fees by adding a per player fee, currently $15/registration. The player fee is designed to proportionately distribute the fee to the larger programs who represent a larger portion of the costs. Our individual sports have additional costs to prepare for each season and seamlessly transition throughout the season. In order to be prepared for the season to begin, many items must be ordered in advance of final registrations being paid. Some items are long-term assets and some are current assets, both affect cash flows.
     
    We have been prudent stewards of our members' finances and have worked diligently to have budgets with room for unexpected financial obstacles. I don’t think anyone had prepared for this type of event, CGAA or otherwise.
     
    As President and CEO, I am writing to you to let you know that I am advising our programs to maintain our financial prudence should seasons be cancelled and we refund program fees to you our members. Please understand that although no activities may have taken place, there may still be sunk costs that are unable to be recaptured, and therefore might not be refunded. I have created a simplified story to explain how CGAA works.
     
    Picture this if you will:
     
    You are in charge of your high school reunion (volunteer). It costs $10,000 for the venue and you have 100 people, so registration is $100 per person. There is a $1,000 non-refundable deposit for the venue. It’s a perfect world, so you collect all $10,000 and pay the $1,000 deposit; this works out to $10/person. Unfortunately there is a pandemic and you have to cancel your reunion and the venue keeps your deposit; each classmate receives a $90 refund. I believe this is a simplified example of what happens with CGAA that makes it clear. No classmate would argue with the organizer for the sunk cost of the deposit; I would suspect that each of you understand the similarity to our association, and feels this way about CGAA. We certainly are bigger and more complex than this example, however the distilled down essence is exactly the same. 
     
    I expect that while most of you understand that this is the reality we are dealing with, no one likes it. Hopefully, as a part of this association, you value the opportunities we provide and appreciate that CGAA is really all of us working together to provide learning opportunities for our youth. There no doubt will be an end to this pandemic, and we will be prepared to provide you the same amazing programs for your player(s). Each sport will be calculating what their refunds will look like. In each situation, we will do our best to refund as much as we can without putting the future stability of the sport in jeopardy. In some cases, it may mean using uniforms ordered this year for next season, or saving equipment to use next season. Thank you for being a member of this association. I especially want to thank all the volunteer board members, directors, and coaches who put their hearts and souls into these activities, and have been working through these unprecedented times. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to me and I will do my best to assist you. 
     
    Thank you, we will get through this together.
     
    Daniel Harrison
    CGAA President / CEO
    president@cgaa.us
    651-231-6829

    Important update regarding our 2020 Baseball Season (April 2020 Update).

    To Our Baseball Community,

     

    We hope this message finds you all well. As with everything in our lives at this time there’s still uncertainty regarding the fate of the 2020 baseball season. We’re still optimistic that the upcoming baseball season will be played in some fashion, however, we’ve not been able to formulate a solid plan. For traveling baseball, our league administrator MBL is hoping to get the season started by June 1st. If this comes to fruition, we will plan to start our in-house season at the same time. We’ll communicate our plans for both travel and in-house baseball as soon as they become clearer. Thank you all very much for your patience!

     

    CGAA Baseball Board

    Important Baseball info, regarding the 2020 season Update for March 2020

    Baseball Families:

     

    I hope this message finds you well and you are doing all you can to help the community in order to stop this virus.  We had our monthly board meeting last month, and we'd like to communicate to you the following;

     

    1. CGAA is following the District, MN Dept of Health, CDC and other government agencies for protocols and  general guidance on social distancing.  We are following this daily to assure we are doing our part.  As you all know, the west rink is closed indefinitely. As far as practice goes, coaches are not allowed to organize a group practice with their teams until further notice. This recommendation follows state and federal protocols set around social distancing.

     

    2.  For the travel baseball players, the registration deadline is March 31st.  We are keeping that deadline in hopes that we will still be having a season.  Currently, MBL will be postponing the start of the MBL season, the new proposed start date will be May 18th. MBL is currently asking for associations to give their input on how the season should play out so we should know more soon. As of right now, the MBL league scheduling meetings will still be held on April 4th and coaches meetings on April 14-16th. 

     

    3. In-House registration has been pushed back to April 17th as a deadline.  If you have not registered yet and would like to hold off that would be okay.  We will be scrambling to make teams and get a schedule put together so please bear with us.  The plan for right now is to push back the start of the in-house season to aligh with the proposed MBL travel season, or May 18th.  

    4.  We are encouraging the baseball community to continue to think about baseball.  A great activity for kids stuck at home is to play catch for 20 minutes.  We are going to be working on a throwing program, some simple strength and conditioning training and fundamental skills videos/challenges.

     

    Please make sure that you are doing your part and stay safe.

     

    Tim Kaplan

    President CG Baseball

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Check on Field Availability due to Weather

    The CG Hotline can also be used to inquire on field availability due to weather conditions at 651-458-6060

     

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      The Cottage Grove Athletic Association is involved in charitable gambling.  Board meetings are held on the 2nd Sunday of each month at which gambling issues are discussed.  All active members of more than 6 months have a right to vote on any gambling issues.  These meetings are held at the Youth Service Bureau Building, Suite 202, 7064 S. West Point Douglas Road  Cottage Grove, Minnesota 55016 at 7:00pm

      About CGAA Baseball

      Cottage Grove Athletic Association Baseball provides spring to summer baseball for Cottage Grove youth.
      Our In-House programs start at age 4 and go up to age 12.
      Our traveling programs start with 9 and under teams and go up to 15 years old.