Hi everyone,

The SAVA board met last night to discuss the questions that have come up throughout the registration process and how we'll kick off this season.

In Summary:

• We are looking for 1 more women's and 2 more coed teams, please reach out if you're interested in a spot.
• There will not be a seeding tournament this year, you will be seeded based on your captain's selection and previous season results. We'll do 1 or 2 shuffles throughout the season.
• We are using the same format as prior years where teams play in groups of 3 each week. You'll play 2 games and minor officiate (line judging & score keeping) for the game you don't play.
• Please complete your rosters as soon as possible, this is the only way we can prevent double booking players. Players must be on the roster by Wed Oct 27th in order to play on the 31st.

There have been many questions and some concerns raised over the past couple weeks, so thank you for everyone's patience and support while we navigate getting this season going. Your feedback ultimately helps make this league better in the long run.

We closed off registration yesterday, and had a pretty good turn out considering the general situation we're in. Unfortunately we currently have 29 women's and 31 coed teams, which are both garbage numbers from a scheduling perspective. We'll be moving back to the familiar play format from previous seasons where teams play in groups of 3 each week where you play 2 games and minor officiate 1, so having one more women's team and 2 more coed teams would be ideal. Please reach out if you're interested in a spot this year. There will be no seeding tournament this year, for public health and logistical reasons. Some people have expressed a desire to get rid of the seeding tournament entirely, but that's a discussion best left for planning next season. Instead we'll be placing teams based on what their captain picked when registering and using previous seasons' results to handle edge cases (like if we have too many C division teams and need to bump a team up or down). There will be no games on long weekends this year (Specifically Dec 26th, Jan 2nd and Feb 20th). We also currently don't have gyms rented for Nov 7th and Dec 19th, but will look into finding space to rent for those days.

As is the norm these days, we spent a lot of time talking about public health guidelines and the once in a century pandemic situation we're still in. We've made a couple small tweaks to our Vaccination Policy, mainly to say that while masks aren't required since all players must be fully vaccinated, we still encourage players to wear them. Volleyball can be a surprisingly wet sport, there's a reason my team is called the Sweatstain Bears. So even though it's not required, we still encourage people mask up and take all precautions available. The single biggest risk to the season this year is having a COVID case linked back to our league. Just a friendly reminder that there's an immediate 5 year suspension for any person caught providing false vaccination information or assisting in helping an unvaccinated person participate. I promise we will be diligent about enforcing our Vaccination Policy and we'll make sure there's plenty of masks and hand sanitizer available for people to use. In the event we do get shut down, teams will be partially refunded based on how many weeks we were able to play.

We will also be looking at setting up a sublist/players looking for teams list like previous seasons. We will get in contact with anyone who has reached out about that once it's available to join, and we'll let captains know once it's up. We're also going to try to setup a way for players to optionally provide proof of vaccination prior to Oct 31st. This would be to try and speed up the verification process on the first day of the season, but not required. We'll send out more info on how verification on the first day and throughout the season will work closer to the 31st through TeamLinkt. One more small thing to touch on regarding SVA memberships. SVA refs can only officiate matches between SVA members, so we need all players to be SVA members, but we're looking into a way for SAVA to do all the required registration on behalf of our players. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

Cheers,

Jesse Rolheiser