Fall 2020 Update
The Board of Phoenix PONY Baseball met on 6/11/2020 to discuss the Fall 2020 Season and have decided to postpone the opening of the Fall 2020 registration. The Board will reconvene to re-evaluate opening registration in late July or early August based on information we have available to us at that time.
Those families whose Spring registrations were converted to Fall registrations, will be contacted and given a pro-rated refund on their Spring registrations given the uncertainty related to the Fall season at this time.
We recognize that this decision will be as disappointing to many of you as it is to all of us. It is not a decision that we are taking lightly.
Briefly, the following factors played into this difficult decision to postpone:
Being able to guarantee the health and safety of the players and their families.
The State of Arizona in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control released guidelines for re-opening of Youth Sports (these are posted on a separate tab on the site for you to review). After reviewing these, we did not feel that with the current number of volunteers that we have in the organization, we could implement and enforce these guidelines quickly and effectively enough to provide meaningful protections to everyone to get Fall season started on time..
Field Availability
We rely exclusively on City of Phoenix and Kyrene Schools for fields to hold our events. At present, all City and Kyrene fields are closed to organized sporting events of all kinds. There is currently no guidance as to when, or if, fields will be made available to us.
Current COVID-19 status in the State of Arizona
Over the course of the last week, we have seen an increasing trend in the number of cases and hospitalizations related to COVID-19 in Arizona. As an organization, we did not feel it would be responsible to bring together large numbers of people to our events during this apparent uptick in cases.
It just doesn't feel like it would be fun...
As we looked at the guidelines requiring families to stay away from each other, having players sitting outside the dugouts away from each other, everyone wearing masks, and having people walking around trying their best to enforce the guidelines, it just didn't seem like it would be fun for us, for you or most importantly for the players.
I have a son who has played in the league for years now and to him, baseball means running around before and after games and practices with his friends, horsing around in the dugout during games (much to my chagrin), spitting sunflower seeds, talking to the runner he is trying to hold on first, having the umpire behind home plate explaining things to him. He desperately wants to get all that back and play ball. He, like every kid, has had a lot taken away from them over the last few months and some of them are really scared right now with all the uncertainty surrounding them. If we were to start now, none of those things he loves about the game mentioned above would be allowed. It just wouldn't be the game he loves right now.
So for now, we are going to continue our pause on play. We will hopefully be in a position in a couple months where we can resume the game safely and without restrictions. We are considering all options including a shortened season or playing in the Winter.
Thank you all for your patience and understanding. We will provide updates periodically as we know more.