GNLL families,

This pandemic has continued to create an extremely confusing and risky environment for all of us. When will we be “Back to Normal” is not a question anyone can answer. As the Greater Nashua Little League Board of Directors struggle with the impacts of COVID-19 on baseball and the community as a whole. During last week’s Board of Directors meeting, the decision was made that Greater Nashua Little League will not conduct formal organized baseball through 2020. We fully understand that there are many opinions on this manner, but there were 3 key influences that resulted in our decision:

1. Safety
2. Back to School Initiatives and Guidelines
3. Return To Play Guidelines from the State, City and Little League International

Safety
Paramount is the safety and well-being of our players, coaches, and families.
Our community has many different perspectives on the impacts of COVID-19 and the Board debated these facts extensively in making this decision. There were also “Back To Play” guidelines and requirements developed to ensure the lowest risk and safest possible environment for our children and families when returning to play. After great deliberation we were convinced that the SAFEST and lowest risk course of action were to suspend formal, organized baseball operations through the remainder of the year 2020.

Back to School Initiatives and Guidelines

The Board of Directors holds highly the influence of the School Boards evaluation of the risk factors when determining back to school protocols. Given that Nashua City and School Board have evaluated the risk as too high to return this fall in other than a virtual capacity, we thought this was significant in determining how we should move forward with the remaining season. We thought if it were to risky to return back to school, it would be too risky to start up formal baseball operations.

Return To Play Guidelines from the State, City and Little League International

There is published clear and strict guidelines and requirements for return to play protocols. They ranged from mask wearing requirements, equipment sanitizing directives, dugout conduct and social distancing conduct. We talked to several Coaches and parents of children that were currently participating in AAU (high cost pay to play travel baseball) as well as other local leagues and other townships to see how they were conducting baseball operations while following the clear and strict back to play protocols. It was crystal clear and unanimous that those teams were NOT properly following all back to play guidelines and protocols outlined by the City, State and League… Period. The GNLL Board of Directors felt it would be a daunting task to properly and dutifully follow all guidelines diligently nor could we effectively manage all requirements and restrictions to ensure the absolute lowest risk and safest environment for our children and families in the league. If you can’t do it right…. You would simply be increasing the risk and unnecessarily jeopardizing the safety of the children and families…..that is something we simply could not be a part of.

What Now?

As you know, we are a non-profit organization and are of limited resources. We are all volunteers i.e. not paid members of the board. Honestly, we have spent about $9,000 in preparation for the season (uniforms, equipment Red Sox Mascot appearances) but only collected about $4,000 in registration before we stopped in March. This has had significant impact on our league budget. Some of you are asking if we will refund the registration fees. There are a couple options for you to consider. We will willingly support you in any case:

1. We can apply a credit to your account to be applied towards the 2021 season. We will be beginning 2021 registration on Oct 1.
2. You can donate your registration fee to the League. This would be greatly appreciated and would significantly help us deal with the extraordinary costs associated with COVID 19 on the league.
3. You can request a full refund. We will process them as quickly as we can. Just email me or the treasurer with your Name and mailing address. We will verify your payment and quickly send a refund check.

SKILLS and DRILLS Baseball events:

Though we may not be conducting formal organized baseball operations, there are several coaches that may be looking at putting together skills and drills sessions to get your kids out of the house and on the field (in a completely safe and low risk COVID environment). More information will be following very soon. If you are interested, please let me know so we can see how many are interested. I want to thank you for understanding our decision and supporting Greater Nashua Little League. We look forward to a 2021 season that will be bigger and better than ever.

Thom Kelly
President
Greater Nashua Little League
President.gnll@gmail.com