scheduling faq
FOR MANAGERS (AKA 'HEAD COACH')
Can I practice at another field or time that is crossed out on our schedule?
ALL fields in Menifee get allocated out to various leagues or teams. This means that if it's not ours, it belongs to someone else. If nobody is on a Valley Wide field and the field is not prepped (chalked and dragged) for a game that evening then you can use it at least until it's allocated user arrives, then you must immediately vacate the field, including outfield area. For City Parks fields, they are more strict about this, we're not allowed to use their fields unless we are actually scheduled to use them. IF our league is scheduled to use it, you can use a corner of the outfield grass as long as the teams that are scheduled on it, by our scheduler, are okay with it. Sometimes the older teams might be planning on hitting some balls that far, in which case you'd be preventing them from doing so.
Can I text/DM/email you to ask for a certain field to use for practice?
No, you must use the practice request form. A link to this form can be found on the practice schedule online spreadsheet, up near the top/right of the page. This system is to keep things more organized, efficient. Keeping track of the many requests we get can be very complicated, so rather than lose some of those requests we require them to all be done on the request form where they're kept track of on a spreadsheet.
Who do I contact if lights are not on and it's getting dark?
For City Fields (Audie, Centennial), contact the scheduler, and/or post in your division group asap. For Valley Wide fields Lago Vista and Eller, call the offce at Wheatfield, assuming you are using the field in one of our allocated times. For Valley Wide fields Wheatfield and Marion Ashley, either go into that office, or call that office, they turn those on manually.
Why does the practice schedule come out just one or two weeks at a time, can't we just keep it the same each week?
In the pre-season, field availability is changing on a weekly basis, and we often don't even know exactly what we're going to have more than a week or two in advance. Additionally, as the days get longer, our field availability increases on all of those unlit fields. We also cannot schedule practices after Opening Day until the game schedule is set, because several of the evening weeknight slots are lost due to us having games there instead.
Why isn't the game schedule put out sooner?
The pre-season practice schedule is very time-consuming, so that means it takes longer to get to the game schedule. Beyond that, we have to get exact and final allocation from Valley Wide, and we have to get detailed information from any leagues we may be interleague playing with. Once our scheduler has completed the schedule, it then has to be approved by Valley Wide as well.
Why does the game schedule change sometimes?
There are many variables that can cause the schedule to have to be changed. Sometimes a field can become unavailable due to a field issue or something else. Sometimes the other team just can't make it, due to not having enough players able to get there or something else. Sometimes we can't get any umpires to that game as it was originally scheduled. Sometimes the scheduler just makes a mistake and needs to correct it. We have over 60 teams each season, plus teams from EVB and sometimes French Valley and Temecula, putting together our schedule is a very complicated task. Almost all changes come in the first two weeks though, most of those in the first week even, so we tell everyone to keep checking and re-checking the schedule for changes in those first couple of weeks. For changes after that initial 2-week period, we blast it out pretty good so everyone should be able to see it.
Can I practice at another field or time that is crossed out on our schedule?
ALL fields in Menifee get allocated out to various leagues or teams. This means that if it's not ours, it belongs to someone else. If nobody is on a Valley Wide field and the field is not prepped (chalked and dragged) for a game that evening then you can use it at least until it's allocated user arrives, then you must immediately vacate the field, including outfield area. For City Parks fields, they are more strict about this, we're not allowed to use their fields unless we are actually scheduled to use them. IF our league is scheduled to use it, you can use a corner of the outfield grass as long as the teams that are scheduled on it, by our scheduler, are okay with it. Sometimes the older teams might be planning on hitting some balls that far, in which case you'd be preventing them from doing so.
Can I text/DM/email you to ask for a certain field to use for practice?
No, you must use the practice request form. A link to this form can be found on the practice schedule online spreadsheet, up near the top/right of the page. This system is to keep things more organized, efficient. Keeping track of the many requests we get can be very complicated, so rather than lose some of those requests we require them to all be done on the request form where they're kept track of on a spreadsheet.
Who do I contact if lights are not on and it's getting dark?
For City Fields (Audie, Centennial), contact the scheduler, and/or post in your division group asap. For Valley Wide fields Lago Vista and Eller, call the offce at Wheatfield, assuming you are using the field in one of our allocated times. For Valley Wide fields Wheatfield and Marion Ashley, either go into that office, or call that office, they turn those on manually.
Why does the practice schedule come out just one or two weeks at a time, can't we just keep it the same each week?
In the pre-season, field availability is changing on a weekly basis, and we often don't even know exactly what we're going to have more than a week or two in advance. Additionally, as the days get longer, our field availability increases on all of those unlit fields. We also cannot schedule practices after Opening Day until the game schedule is set, because several of the evening weeknight slots are lost due to us having games there instead.
Why isn't the game schedule put out sooner?
The pre-season practice schedule is very time-consuming, so that means it takes longer to get to the game schedule. Beyond that, we have to get exact and final allocation from Valley Wide, and we have to get detailed information from any leagues we may be interleague playing with. Once our scheduler has completed the schedule, it then has to be approved by Valley Wide as well.
Why does the game schedule change sometimes?
There are many variables that can cause the schedule to have to be changed. Sometimes a field can become unavailable due to a field issue or something else. Sometimes the other team just can't make it, due to not having enough players able to get there or something else. Sometimes we can't get any umpires to that game as it was originally scheduled. Sometimes the scheduler just makes a mistake and needs to correct it. We have over 60 teams each season, plus teams from EVB and sometimes French Valley and Temecula, putting together our schedule is a very complicated task. Almost all changes come in the first two weeks though, most of those in the first week even, so we tell everyone to keep checking and re-checking the schedule for changes in those first couple of weeks. For changes after that initial 2-week period, we blast it out pretty good so everyone should be able to see it.