Welcome to Summer 2012!!

Welcome to the OCUA Summer League for 2012! The purpose of this message is to provide useful introductory information regarding the upcoming summer league. Please take a few minutes to carefully read all of the information provided below.

League Start Date and Initial Schedules
The 2012 Summer League begins play on Tuesday, May 15. As with each round of games, schedules for each division will be created four days before the first game.

The U29 division will begin with a season-opening clinic on Monday, May 28 for players wanting to dust off their cleats a week early. The first U29 games will be played on Monday, June 4.

Respect and Spirit of the Game
As in previous years, the main focus of your summer league coordinators is to ensure that everyone involved in the league--players, captains, coordinators and league officials--is treated with respect and that the proper emphasis is placed upon Spirit of the Game.

The key to ensuring that everyone has an enjoyable season will be communication. We ask that any significant incident be reported to the your division's coordinators.

Team Seeding
The coordinators of each division are currently in the process of providing initial seedings to their teams. These initial seedings will provide the basis upon which the ratings ladder will progress.

Once the ranking process is completed, captains will be given the opportunity to provide feedback to their coordinators regarding the initial rankings.

Teams whose results show that they were clearly over- or under-ranked in the initial seeding process may have their seeding adjusted during the course of the season via a manual adjustment of their rating points.

Riverside Fields
Games during the summer season will be scheduled on Riverside 1 and Riverside 2. Games will not be scheduled on Riverside 3. Captains of teams playing on Riverside 1 or 2 can agree to move their game to Riverside 3 if they find that the conditions on their assigned field are marginal. 

Smoke-Free Ottawa Regulations
All players are reminded that as of April 2, 2012, smoking is prohibited in all outdoor areas on municipal properties including parks, playgrounds, beaches, sports fields, and outdoor areas around City facilities. As of July 2, bylaw officers will have the authority to issue provincial offence notices that carry fines up to $300. UPI is private property and, as such, does not fall under the smoke-free bylaw.

Holidays
OCUA will not schedule games for the following dates:

- Sunday, May 20 (Victoria Day weekend)
- Sunday, July 1 (Canada Day)
- Sunday, August 5 (Civic Holiday weekend)

Please note that games will be scheduled as usual on Monday, May 21 (Victoria Day) and Monday, August 6 (Civic Holiday).

Playoff Dates
Monday - Saturday August 25 (Quarterfinals August 20)
Tuesday - Sunday August 19 (Quarterfinals August 14)
Wednesday - Sunday August 26 (Quarterfinals August 22)
Thursday - Saturday August 18 (Quarterfinals August 16)
Friday - Saturday August 18 (Quarterfinals August 17)
Sunday -  Semifinals August 19; Finals August 26
U29 - Finals August 27

Teams that cannot attend playoffs may withdraw without penalty before the score reporting deadline of their last regular season game. Any team that withdraws from playoffs after that point will be subject to the default penalty ($75) due to the fact that late withdrawals from playoffs require the coordinators to restructure playoff pools and schedules and may result in other teams playing less games at playoffs.

Defaults
As noted at the captains’ meeting, all teams who default will incur a fee of $75 to cover the cost of the field rental.

Captains are expected to use all resources available to them--the spares list for their division, Open Forum, etc.--to prevent defaults from occurring. Captains are also expected to contact their opposing captain as soon as they become aware that they may be in danger of defaulting. Advance warning of a default will not negate the default penalty, if a default occurs.

Score Reporting and Schedule Creation
During the course of the 2012 summer season, captains will have 36 hours from the completion of their game to submit the game score to Leaguerunner. Coordinators will then generate the schedule for the following week's games within 36 hours of that deadline. The schedule for the following week will therefore be available 72 hours following the current week's game, providing teams with four days of advance notice of the time and location of their next game.

As prompt score reporting is essential in allowing coordinators to meet their scheduling commitment, teams that fail to report scores within 36 hours will receive a penalty to their team's Spirit of the Game result for any game in which they fail to report a score.

Spares Lists
A spares list has been created in Leaguerunner for each summer division. Captains who are in need of spares will be able to contact the players on their division’s spares list for assistance. The spares lists can be found in Leaguerunner at http://www.ocua.ca/leaguerunner/league/view/264.

Field Preferences
Leaguerunner allows teams to rank field sites in order of desirability for your team. When choosing a field for your home games, Leaguerunner will allocate a field at the first available site on your list. We recommend that captains rank at least 10 sites; for best results, captains should rank all sites allocated to their division.

Captains can rank fields via the "field preferences" option within their team's menu in Leaguerunner. You may rank all, some, or none of the sites allocated to the division your team participates in. Field preferences can be modified at any point in the season.

All captains should review their field preferences before the start of the season to ensure that their team's preferences are reflective of the 2012 field allocations for their division.

Communications
The preferred method for captains or players to contact their coordinators is via the summer-[day]-coordinators@ocua.ca email address (e.g. summer-monday-coordinators@ocua.ca, for the Monday division).

Coordinators communicate with their captains and assistant captains via automated email lists based on Leaguerunner contact data. It is therefore vital that all captains and assistant captains ensure that their email contact information is always up-to-date in Leaguerunner.

To stay up-to-date on the latest OCUA info and events, make sure you're receiving OCUA's newsletter, Ultimate Happenings. To subscribe to Ultimate Happenings, send an email to UH-L-request@lists.ocua.ca with the subject "subscribe". If you have any difficulties with this method, email uh@ocua.ca.

That is all for now. Please feel free to send any comments, questions, or suggestions to your coordinator’s email address. Best of luck in your season!