Many families like to plan things out months, if not a year or more in advance. To minimize potential conflicts, here are some things to know about our baseball seasons, and how to plan accordingly.

Practices: No matter if it is the spring/summer or fall season, most teams practice twice a week on weeknights. Managers for each team choose their practice days, times, and locations. There is no way to request practices on specific weekdays, to avoid other conflicts. Each team practices on different nights of the week, each week. If your player participates in something simultaneously to one or both of our seasons, it’s likely there will be at least some conflicts. Pick one of them as your priority and let whoever needs to know, know which will be your priority if there is a conflict.

Games: During the spring/summer season, teams play an average of 2 games per week. Younger divisions, T-Ball, Rookie, and Minor, usually play 1 game on a weeknight and 1 on a Saturday. There can be doubleheaders in there, but it’s generally not more than 2 over the course of a season. Older divisions, Major and Babe Ruth, play far more doubleheader games, sometimes all their games are scheduled this way. There can be a mix of weeknight and weekend doubleheaders, just weeknight games, or just weekend games. With these divisions, there is a bit more travel involved, as we play interleague games with other Babe Ruth leagues in and around the metro area. Some of the likely locations would be Kiowa, Elbert, Limon, Brighton, Thornton, and Denver.

During the fall season, games are almost always on Saturdays. There can be games on Friday nights, depending on the number of teams, though. We will do some doubleheaders, depending on the length of the season. All play is local with no interleague play for any divisions.

Tournaments: Tournaments generally run Fridays and Saturdays, with the possibility of going into Sundays, if we run into weather. Occasionally, tournaments may begin on a Thursday or Wednesday, if necessary. Avoid vacations during these weeks, if possible. It seems that we have at least 1 team every year who can’t field a team, because they have half a dozen players out of town during a tournament. Spring/summer tournaments are in the middle of June and the later part of July, with the fall baseball tournament being in October, likely the weekend before and/or after fall break.

All-Stars: If you are interested in trying out for an All-Star team, you need to make sure you are available over the 4^th of July holiday weekend, as this is when the state tournament usually falls. The regional tournaments usually run the 3^rd or 4^th weekends in July, if you were to advance from the state tournament. These tournaments run anywhere from 4-6 days and will always require travel, unless we host one. (Don’t hold your breath on Centennial hosting a state or regional tournament anytime soon.)

How to plan playing multiple sports: Playing multiple sports is a good thing. It’s strongly encouraged. Every type of sport and league out there has dates which may overlap just a little or quite a bit. Look at our season dates to see how much the seasons overlap. If it’s 1/3^rd or less, you are probably okay. When you start reaching half or more, then it could become an issue. If it’s on Sundays, you should be fine, as we rarely must play anything on Sundays. If it’s on Saturdays, you are far more likely to run into many conflicts.

Planning vacations: If you do like to plan vacations during the season, go Sundays through Thursdays to be safe. You won’t miss any tournaments (sans a division starting early or something to do with All-Stars). You may miss games or practices during the week though.

For the spring/summer baseball season, we start most divisions in April and go through July. Assessments are on Saturdays in April, so try to avoid conflict there, if possible. This only applies if you aren’t returning to your previous team or are new to the league. If not attending assessments, practices usually start in late April. In late April and early May, we have very few games scheduled.

If you are looking for a weekend trip, the first two weeks of May are generally safe. Some teams may play over Memorial Day weekend, but just on that Saturday.

We usually finish up the spring/summer season around the 3^rd weekend in July. Between that and about the middle of August, there is nothing going on except potentially All-Stars, if a team continues to advance. For the fall season, we usually start practices in the middle of August and games towards the end of August. The tournament can be anytime in October, so if going out of town in October, schedule it Sunday through Thursday to be safe. Vacations November through March should not conflict with anything within Centennial, maybe Winter Wiffleball.