MAPLE v. MLS Cup Final

There's a battle being waged by the forces who support the New England Revolution and the folks, actually folk, who oversee Massachusetts Premier League Soccer (MAPLE). In it's own right, MAPLE is a fine organization, overseeing amateur play for youths all over Massachusetts. However, in a stunning display of arrogance, MAPLE's commission, Paul Irwin, has said that no MAPLE games will be cancelled or allowed to be re-scheduled next Sunday (Oct. 20) afternoon in deference to the MLS 2002 Cup Final.
The bottom line here is that those who participate in MAPLE have to make a decision - either risk forfeiture and a monetary penalty or play the games as scheduled [Explain that to a 10-, 11-, 12- or 13-year-old boy or girl].
To me, the decision should be a no-brainer. We need your support - please contact MAPLE {www.maplesoccer.org) and let them know how you think it should be (their telephone number is there, too). The following is a copy of an e-mail which was sent by Commissioner Irwin late this past week [prior to today's match] on the subject of cancelling MAPLE's games [which are regularly scheduled on Sunday afternoon's] or being allowed to re-schedule [For what it's worth, I've been informed that two clubs were allowed to re-schedule their assigned matches to a more user-friendly time so the two teams could participate in a tournament - hence, MAPLE's rules must be written in chalk]:

The answer is NO.

This is not the first time this has come up. Similar appeals were made in connection with the U.S. qualification games for the 1994, 1998 and 2002 World Cup. Many years ago I tried to accommodate in one such situation and it was a thoroughgoing disaster. Most players did not attend the game for which we broke our backs to re-schedule. I got complaints from many parents who had foregone other events to be available for their regular MAPLE games and then could not make the make-up times. Others complained that they were being pressured into spending money that they didn't have on a family outing they didn't want. Many games never got made up before the snow flew and it screwed up the standings. Never again. Steve Sampson, Bruce Arena and Fernando Clavillo [sic] have all called me personally to lobby for various events, most recently the US/Holland game last spring. The answer to them was the same as it would be if Steve Nicol called now. Teams cannot re-schedule - not even by adjusting a time. Any that do, even by a half hour, will forfeit and pay a fine.

This is not a discussable issue.

You should know that, when MLS was being developed, we consulted with the Revolution organizers; we said we would do everything in our power to help - with the sole exception of re-scheduling any Sunday afternoons. They understood then, and I believe still do. I think we have kept up our part. We constantly and vigorously promote Revolution, Breakers and other professional soccer support and attendance - on our website, by email, at our meetings, and by complementary ads in our books. It is the station to which our best players aspire. I hope everyone in MAPLE will be there this Saturday when there is no conflict. I know I will be.

Paul Irwin

 

Oh yeah...
BIG PROPS to Doug Chapman for publicly supporting this iniative!
Thank you!

 

Here's a followup by Paul Irwin, MAPLE's commissioner - dated 10-13-02 [To those who've supported this iniative, Thank You - please, no more death threats; let's keep it sane, please] Thanks, especially to Doug Chapman and the broadcast team:

Club Contacts, Commission Members, Kathy and Rich:

Most or all of you are aware that the Revolution has made the MLS Cup final. Most of you are probably also aware that the game is scheduled for next Sunday afternoon, in such a way that no MAPLE player or coach - regardless of their game time - could make both their MAPLE game and the MLS Cup game. Those of you who watched yesterday's game on television will be aware that the Revolution's announcers put some not very subtle pressure on the "MAPLE administration" to cancel MAPLE games for next Sunday in favor of the MLS Cup. There is a fair thread of vituperative commentary on our Web site "Touchline" questioning my ancestry and sanity for not immediately calling off all MAPLE games next Sunday. I have gotten - as you might imagine - some email on the subject, although actually only about twenty pieces (out of a fall MAPLE population of players and adults of about 18,000). These notes range from plaintive pleas from boys and girls who really just want to be able to do both - go to the game and play - to poison pen pieces stopping just short (so far) of death threats.

I don't know whether those that I have heard from are just a vocal minority or instead spokespeople for the silent and vast majority of the MAPLE community. But there are at this point enough comments to prompt me to try to hold a league meeting by email among the Commission, the designated representatives of the member clubs, the Executive Director and the Referee Coordinator.

Here goes.

As I see it, the choices are as follows:

Do nothing; stay with the rules as they are: No grounds for cancellation exist except weather and direct academic conflict. Everyone plays or forfeits unless there is a monsoon rain next Sunday. I can see one possible modification of this option:
Leave the rules in place except waive forfeit fines for the day if a team can show that it was at the MLS Cup, and if it gave the office adequate advance notice to call off the other team and the referees, and to move other potentially affected games around.

Allow opposing coaches to agree to reschedule on a game-by-game basis. There are a number of possible variations on this theme, not necessarily mutually exclusive:
Restrict this option to the sections and divisions for whom the fall does not "count." This would include U13 and U14 Divisions one and two, and - for the moment - U11. (If the proposed restructuring is approved on the 30th, the membership may decide that U11 counts in a sense for this fall as well.)
Require the majority (or all) of both teams that cancel a given game to have tickets to the MLS Cup.
Allow teams in "counting" sections and divisions to agree to reschedule, but only if a make-up time and date - prior to October 27 - is agreed and reported to the office at the time the cancellation of next Sunday is reported, possibly with the additional understanding that, if the game is not played as scheduled, both teams will get a maximum goal differential (0-6) loss.

Cancel the whole day.
If anyone has another possibility that's materially different from these, let me know.

In deciding how you and your club feel about this, consider the following, in no particular order of importance:

The League cannot - because of MYSA restrictions - officially re-schedule anything except on a Sunday afternoon. The next one of these available, because of the MAPLE-D spring qualification tournament, is November 16, on which day it will be too dark to play by about 4:20, not to mention the fact that by then the games would be entirely irrelevant to the whole of MAPLE-D. (We are absolutely prohibited by MYSA from compressing the MAPLE-D tournament into a Saturday/Sunday as it was in the past. The two-Sunday format was a result of a complicated compromise that does allow us priority for our U12 divisionalization tournament in June. [Because it is no longer part of State Cups, it would not otherwise have had priority.] )
We cannot advance the games on Sunday by more than an hour at maximum. We start at 1:00 because a substantial percentage of our referee corps does men's games on Sunday morning. If we start any earlier than noon, we are simply without referees for many of our games. Moreover, many clubs do not have permission to use their fields before noon. However, a noon start for the day might allow kids from the first game set of the day to make it to Foxboro (provided that their game is not in the western or extreme northern part of the state). This may constitute a fourth option.

In thinking about self-scheduled make-ups, remember that it is already dark too early to hold one after school unless the teams are next door to each other. If your teams have dual rostered players, Saturdays are probably out for make-ups. You need to be aware that MYSA is cracking down hard on the order of priorities, which puts us at the bottom of the list except on Sunday afternoons. I have already had one very vigorous complaint from BAYS about a MAPLE coach taking dual rostered kids to a tournament this weekend against the order of priorities (which gives Columbus Day weekend to town team tournaments). This and a couple of other similar situations have certain MTOC leagues in such a furor that the MYSA Board has before it at this Wednesday's meeting a proposal to allow enforcement of the order of priorities against players and at the MYSA Board level. This is of sufficient import that I will share with you the proposed rule and the opposition to it that I sent to Sid Bloom (the MYSA President):
[proposed language to be inserted at the beginning of the order of priorities;] "These priorities are to be respected and adhered to by all of the various soccer interests that compete for a player's attention and time. No coach, assistant coach or other person representing an organization may attempt to exert undue influence to convince a player to violate the priority guidelines established below. In determining whether undue influence has been exerted, a “reasonable man” approach will be used. The applicable organization (Mass Youth Soccer, a League or an affiliated organization) may bring disciplinary charges against any person who attempts to exert undue influence as described in this provision. An organization may also take disciplinary action against any player who openly violates the priority guidelines established below, using the “reasonable man” approach."
[My opposition on behalf of MAPLE, dated October 11:] Sid:
I write with some alarm concerning the proposed addition to the player priority guidelines (passed on to me by John Burrill today). I suggest that this rush to legislation for the purpose of prohibiting "undue pressure" by coaches is dangerous without a lot of thought and discussion between the sides.
At the moment, the cause célèbre is Columbus Day weekend, and the (at this point still very much alleged) improper behavior of Mr. . But there are other occasions when MAPLE's rights under the priorities are not honored, frankly sneered at and even opposed at an institutional level. In this context I remind you of a situation a year or so ago where a MAPLE U-11 team had to forfeit two Sunday afternoon games because its players went to a couple of South Shore League make-ups scheduled in "MAPLE" time. [The South Shore League] investigated and in effect told me, "Too bad, the kids and their parents simply 'elected' to go to the town games. Nothing we can do about that." Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it seems such "elections" are no longer so benign. Where is the justice in that?
At a larger level, why does the Board - despite long-standing complaints from MAPLE - continue to let MTOC leagues aggressively counterschedule U11 through U14 on Sunday afternoons? South Shore has been doing it for a decade. Others have over the years. I understand that MAYS is now doing it. MAPLE is expected to smile and take it. I think it is time for MYSA to outlaw this sort of thing (with the possible exception of Pioneer Valley, which could arguably claim "grandfathering" because they played U12 and U14 on Sunday afternoons in the 80's before NCCL). It seems to me that you cannot rationally get vigorous about the priority guidelines and let this counterscheduling continue. The offending leagues - at a league level, forget about mere coaches - have all along been saying one of two things to their kids: (a) "We don't care what MYSA says, ignore the guidelines and play for us on Sunday afternoons," or (b) "We don't approve of dual rostering; you must choose, MAPLE or us." If such statements do not constitute "undue pressure," I don't know what does, not to mention the fact that both are in direct violation of fundamental and articulated MYSA policy. If the proposed legislation passes without an appropriate MTOC Sunday afternoon prohibition, my office as MAPLE President would virtually compel me to file a complaint against every other league President (and board) that sponsored Sunday afternoon play for U11's through U14's.
As I think you can see from the emails on which I have copied you and our phone conversations, I am trying to deal as forcefully as I can with player priority issues within the MAPLE community, and with the situation in particular. Others are doing their part. I appreciated Ted's effort [Ted Ritchie, President of BAYS] to direct his people toward the specific and responsible and away from vague and irrational name-calling (although I could have wished he had spent a bit more time on BAYS' obligations under the guidelines as well as its rights). But I have gotten and continue to get many complaints from MAPLE people of inappropriate pressure by various town coaches. Since my failure to get anywhere with the South Shore incident, I have been discouraging these. I have said to MAPLE people that unless they can get written proof of grossly improper conduct, to forget it. Now the MYSA Board is all of a sudden on the verge of condemning people on "reasonable suspicion." Anger and resentment against the town leagues is always there among the MAPLE clubs and coaches. Normally, we keep it under good control. But if the proposed legislation is passed, I expect there will be tens, perhaps hundreds of complaints a season against town coaches and managers. These will have to be taken with the same seriousness and alarm that has attended the situtation.
I think Hosea says something like, "They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind." It feels to me like a whirlwind is brewing. I hope rather than feeding it with aggressive legislation, we can sit down and figure out what makes sense to keep the peace, to actually reduce pressure on the kids rather than increasing it.
Give me a call.
Paul
PS: Legally separate from all of the above, the sentence of the proposed change purporting to punish a player for choosing the wrong commitment is - I am virtually certain - violative of the player's rights. I don't think we have any right to tell him or her what he or she must do. That is why, at the end of the day, they are only "guidelines" as far as the players and their parents are concerned. I know of at least one person (not me) who could be counted on to get such a regulation appealed to the national level, where the rule would in all likelihood get struck down.
Allowing self-determined ad hoc cancellations will inevitably create a number of "holes" in the schedule. Kathy, Rich and I spend hundreds of hours before each season arranging the games to the maximum extent possible in 3-game sets at the various fields. This gives us the best chance of getting 3-person teams of officials to games, and allowing them to rotate so each gets a middle (and therefore more money for the day). Some number of self-determined cancellations will be of 2:30 games. Several things can happen in this case. First, the referee team, needing to be there for 1:00 and 4:00, will have to be paid for the non-game. At almost $100 each, these situations could wind up costing several thousand dollars. A second possibility is that the ref team does not get the message that the 2:30 game was cancelled. (These things happen even in an email/voicemail/internet society.) Seeing no one at 2:30, they depart, leaving the 4:00 game uncovered. This situation could also occur if the 1:00 game were self-cancelled, but not the 2:30 and 4:00, except here two games would go uncovered. The third, and most likely scenario, is that Kathy will have to move the 4:00 game to 2:30 with very little notice.
The coming weeks are "rush hour" for high school and college games, play-offs and the like during the week and on Saturdays. Refs for make-ups may be very hard to come by. The same is true for fields.
Once before we submitted to pressure on a similar point, I think it was during the 1998 World Cup preliminaries. In any case, the U.S. team was playing a critical qualifying game on a Sunday afternoon in Foxboro. After much discussion we decided on Option 2.2 above, telling teams they could agree to re-schedule if both teams had tickets to the game. Our logic was two-fold: Since everyone seems to have a VCR, the marginal benefit of watching a game live on television rather than on tape was not sufficient grounds to re-schedule, and, second, a big part of the exercise was to increase the home pitch advantage. (If this is not the case, why has there never been any pressure for any league to re-schedule for the two previous MLS Cups that have been held here?) At any rate, this decision produced the following problems, among others:
A group of parents threatened to sue the League for collaborating in putting their kids under duress to participate in an event that they were neither interested in nor could afford.
Other parents complained that they had given up important family plans to go to the originally scheduled MAPLE game, had no interest in the U.S. team and felt that allowing cancellation of actual play to go watch someone else play constituted very bad judgment.
Parents of players who couldn't make the make-ups accused us of cheating their kids out of their money's worth for the season.
Teams that didn't cancel in a couple of cases wound up losing out in the standings because of "non-games" (cancelled games that were never made up - I'll explain this in more detail later.)
Whole teams complained that they had been pressured, shamed or tricked by their opponent into agreeing to cancel. This was particularly so when the pressuring team somehow never got around to agreeing on a make-up time.

A couple of teams (who cancelled before they actually got tickets) even complained that they couldn't get enough seats together. Since parents were unwilling to have their kids sit away from their coach/chaperone/friends, some kids neither played nor went to the game. I expect this concern would be even more significant since 9/11.
A number of games went without referees because of the circumstances described above.
While I do hold with Emerson that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of the small mind, whatever we do here will be a precedent. I do not - legally or equitably - see how we could not treat a Breakers' championship game any differently, or another U.S. men's or women's team match of international import. What about the Bulldogs, Renegades, Pioneers and so on? These teams are more in need of our support than the Revolution, and in many ways more accessible from a learning and aspiration point of view.
For the 92 teams in U13 and U14 MAPLE-D, this week's game matters very much. It is - or could be - a significant contributor to whether the team is in the League at all come spring. Sixty of these teams will not be. If these games are cancelled en masse, I frankly despair of getting all of them made up in one week. (We need to know final results by Monday the 28th in order to calculate standings and tie-breaks, schedule the MAPLE-D tournament, and notify teams for the following Sunday.) I will predict - from much Murphy's law experience - that the ones that do not get played will be the ones that will affect tie-breaks and whether a team goes through automatically or gets to the tournament at all. It is tempting to say therefore, let them re-schedule if they both decide to do so, knowing the risks. If the game doesn't get made up, they will only have themselves to blame. The problem is, this "non-game" could affect a third team. Let me give you an example. Teams A and B decide to re-schedule and go to the MLS Cup. For whatever reason, say weather (to keep motives and conspiracies out of the picture), the game never gets made up. Teams B and C wind up tied in the standings; on goal differential margin of one B wins the tie-break and gets into the tournament, while C is dropped from the League for next spring. It turns out that Team A is the top team in the section, and beat C by six goals. Without that game, C has a better goal differential by five than B. So if, as was likely, B had played A and lost, C would have gone to the tournament and possibly the spring, and B would have gone home. (This scenario has actually happened in another context, and I can assure you that the kids' disappointment and heartbreak vastly exceeded that associated with being unable to go to a professional game.) The last part of Option 2.3 above was an attempt to deal with this problem, but suffers (although perhaps not fatally) from the fact that it hurts both teams regardless of whose fault the non-make-up was, and doesn't acknowledge the unavoidable weather cancellation.
The Revolution have known from the beginning that we could not re-schedule around Sunday afternoon conflicts. I spent a good deal of time in 1994 and 1995 talking to future Revolution personnel when MLS was still being formed. They wanted to know what the best game times were. I and others all suggested Saturday nights and week nights. I explained that we only had 14 Sunday afternoons a year to call our own (about 70 hours out of a possible 8,766), that the rest of the time we were boxed in by ODP, State Cups, MTOC and other town leagues and school athletic and other programs. Adding professional game conflicts was just one restriction too many. We said that, except in these Sunday afternoon hours we would do all we could. We have. We give them free ad space in the book every year. We promote them on the Web, by email, and by inviting them to appear and speak at every one of our league meetings (even if, as this fall, they don't always show up). We help with "MAPLE night" each season, although the PR staff at the Revolution freely admit that these promotions do little to spur attendance, which, even among the U11-14 ages, has not been very impressive.
I know this is long-winded, even for me, but I felt it important to get as many considerations on the table up front as possible. We need to make a decision no later than 5:00 pm on Tuesday if we are to change anything for this weekend. Please understand that unless and until a different decision is officially emailed to you as a club contact from me or Kathy, the existing rules remain applicable for this Sunday.
As I read the Constitution, any exception to the rules is ultimately a Commission decision. However, I think I can speak for them in saying that if there is an overwhelming sentiment (a consistent opinion from clubs representing two-thirds of the teams in the league) for a particular solution this has to be heeded. If, on the other hand, opinions are all over the place, I don't know what the Commission will do. I will make sure that the decision, whatever it is, is in an email to you and on the Web by Wednesday morning. In the meantime, get me your input as soon as possible. Try to be very clear on your club's position, referring if you can to one of the specific numbered options above.

Sincerely,
Paul Irwin

PS to those who have written me directly: I have copied you on this email to let you know what is going on. Unless you are a club contact yourself, please direct further comments to your own club contact for inclusion in his or her response to me. Thanks.