thanks sus!

Dear Susan,

I’ve always been grateful for the work you put in as coach of our alumni softball team but until I joined you as a “co-coach” of sorts, I didn’t realize just how grateful we all should be.

I’ve been around since the beginning and have always lent a hand when I could (as one of the original seven of us – Armstrongs, Rohlings, Braddock, Diego and myself – I’ve been around a while) but I never knew just how much work goes into getting the season ready and then keeping it rolling. I don’t even want to think about the fun that is in store in the run up to tournament.

Shirts, waivers, alumni verification, and just getting people to respond to e-mails and evites starts the year. I know that I’ve been lax in responding to things in the past but, wow, there are just people who don’t like to respond to anything in a timely fashion.

As for the rosters which I have taken over for you, if the current roster file format is an improvement over previous years, you have my apologies for having to deal with it (and its 24 hour post-game requirement) all this time. It’s a pain in the butt!

Scheduling is a major hurdle that you have down to a science. I didn’t get involved in it except to be copied on what seemed like a million e-mails. I was so glad then that you were able to handle everything. And then we had to rain out our game last week and you had to go on vacation and leave me to deal with rescheduling.
 
Now, I am eternally grateful that you took care of the scheduling back in March/April. Because I have hardly been more frustrated. The coach of the opposing team began the discussion to reschedule promptly on Thursday, the day after the originally scheduled game, only to fall of the face of the Earth and not finally confirm again until Sunday evening (less than 48 hours to the seemingly agreed upon game time of Tuesday) complete with a more than ambiguous typo (Tursday – is that Tuesday or Thursday?) which he didn’t address until even later. Getting a team together with the proper number of girls in a day and a half – well, that’s difficult. You might think that with a shorter lead time people would respond but not so much. Even after at least 3 e-mails begging. I’m also not sure if we are even following the CAN rules for rescheduling since I know that I didn’t contact the commissioner and I don’t know if the other coach did (I’m so hoping to not get in trouble!).

And it looks like we will very likely get rained out again which might be preferable at this point since I have realized my mistakes in trying to reschedule. Chief among them was to not warn the team of the possibility of a Tuesday game back on Thursday when the make up was proposed.

So… Susan, thank you for the six years of work that you’ve put in to begin, sustain, and run this team. And come back from Europe before I lose my mind!

M

edited to add: the game did get canceled.