January 7, 2014- Welcome to your new USSSA season!

Happy New Year and welcome to Rocky Mountain USSSA's 11th season here in Colorado. We're proud to announce the release of our 2014 schedule which can be found here

We've expanded service this year to give all of you more opportunities to play more often. Exciting news in the Springs where we'll playing all season on new turf fields. This is kind of a new thing here in Colorado and unless you've traveled you probably haven't seen it too many times. Do yourself a favor and make the trip at least once this year to see Ken Reynolds down at Skyview.

We're also making a return to the mixed softball scene in a big way! We have a bunch of tournaments available for this division for only 175.00! Full service, great rules, amazing venues and an outstanding prize package. Winners will nearly double their entry fee! Stay tuned for the full announcement on that front and be ready to play as we kick off the mixed season March 30th in Erie.

I'm relatively happy with the schedule. A few holes here and there that I'll try to fix as the season progresses but I think we've given all of you an opportunity to play as much USSSA softball as you'd like this year.

Two major rule changes this year you'll need to be aware of and I'll elaborate in my annual Policy and Procedure threads on our message boards in the next couple of weeks. First, USSSA has eliminated the courtesy foul. You'll now play with a 3-2 count and no courtesy in all tournaments. I have to get with the leagues but I expect they'll follow the policy as well. Second, we're trying the courtesy runner on a trial basis here in Colorado. More details to follow but the short version is you'll get one runner per inning, anyone can run and you have to be careful about getting them caught on base on the off chance they're supposed to bat.

Once again welcome to your 2014 season. On behalf of all of our directors and umpires, I look forward to seeing you all at the ballfields soon. Now let's get rid of this snow and PLAY BALL!

October 8, 2013: HALL OF FAME BANQUET NOVEMBER 2, 2013

Hello Everyone,

The Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Banquet will be held Saturday Nov.2nd 2013.

The venue will be:

Holiday Inn & Suites (same as last year)
6900 Tower Road
Denver Co 80249
Phone # 303-574-1300
Room: Ballroom
Check in 5:00 pm
Dinner : 6:00 pm
Ceremony : 7:00 pm
Cost $30

This year's inductees are players Zerphayne Willis, Scott Bacon, Mark Haupt, and coach Charlie Graham.

We will also be honoring the RMUSSSA 2013 Slow-Pitch Award Winners.

I hope you can make plans to attend. Please RSVP to attend by Monday Oct. 28th by contacting me at the info below

Dan Neely
303-428-3080
umpiredan1@msn.com

Send checks made out to

Colorado USSSA HOF
8545 Depew St
Arvada Co 80003

Thank you
Dan Neely

May 30, 2013- Schedule

We've released an updated schedule addressing a couple issues we had with venues. We were contracted with the City of Denver for Kennedy on the 22nd of June for eight fields on Saturday and four on Sunday. Despite my having confirmation of this, when the permit came, they only gave us four fields on Sunday and so we immediately got to work finding other venues.

We were lucky to do so but unfortunately it meant splitting the Rocky Mountain Shootout into two weekends. The first weekend, June 22nd, will be held in Brighton and we'll play men's CC and D divisions. The second will be held the following weekend, June 29th in Erie and we'll feature men's E and a women's open division.

Sorry for the late change and thanks to Brighton and Erie for helping us out with the issue. Please take a look at the latest schedule and make sure when you print that it's dated 5/30/13 in the bottom right hand corner.

Schedule Update- April 9, 2013

You'll recall a couple weeks back I mentioned we had a problem booking Christopher fields in Westminster and so were looking for a replacement venue. I wasn't meeting with any success till we lucked out over the weekend when Longmont had a cancellation and we were able to book at Garden Acres. Happy that we'll be able to offer the Colorado Springfest there and sorry we couldn't get settled with Westminster. We'll continue to try and book fields you all enjoy in the future. Please print off a copy of the latest schedule dated 4/9 and note the change.

The SORT OF Denver Omelette- April 8, 2013

Thanks to everyone who came out Saturday and made the Fourth Annual Big Egg a success! Weather was great, most of you were on our best behavior and it seems like everybody had a good time. The weekend was not completely absent problems and so I'll address those here briefly.

We had a couple players play in both the D and E tourney this weekend. I'm surprised that somebody still believes that's ok but I'm going to use it as an educational opportunity and move forward without penalty to anybody involved.

Both players were rostered with both teams and so absent an actual protest I didn't take action. Both play with DJV on a regular basis and as such I would consider them DJV's guys. No action is being taken against DJV.

Tripods is new to our tourneys and I'm going to give them a pass this one time. They may not have understood what our definition of one team/ one tourney is. I'm not taking any action against Tripods either.

The players are probably the guilty party here. One guy even told my director that an umpire had told him it was ok. Please......

That said, this wasn't an NIT, we were playing for tshirts and hoodies and so we're just going to move on, make sure it doesn't happen again and clearly define what we mean by one team/ one tourney.

FOR OUR PURPOSES, PLAYING FOR ONE TEAM PER TOURNAMENT MEANS ALL MEN'S OR WOMEN'S DIVISIONS AT THE SAME LOCATION ON THE SAME WEEKEND.

Using this last weekend as an example, the two players in question were legal to play for either DJV or Tripods. Not both. Don't let it happen in the future because I'll be hitting both the managers and players in question with suspensions and forfeiting the teams from the tourney.

The second issue we had is more severe and won't be tolerated. I don't care how bad you think one of our officials is, you can't threaten them with physical violence. If you have a problem with an umpire you need to grab a director and discuss it with them in a civilized manner. You're not perfect and neither are our umpires but I'm not going to tolerate abuse of officials without applying severe penalties. Keep your cool and remember this is a recreational endeavor.

Hoping to avoid snow this weekend for Ken and Tab and looking forward to seeing you all at what is shaping up to be a huge NIT in two weeks.

March 18, 2013- Hall of Fame Benefit

On behalf of the Colorado USSSA Hall of Fame I'd like to thank all the teams that came out and supported our benefit tourney this last weekend. The weather was better than expected, we had lots of help from the membership and the tournament went off without a hitch.

As the pre-season is now done and we're on the road to a summer of great tourneys, I wanted to take a moment to cover a few things that will make your season easier and more enjoyable come game days.

I get a lot of questions about bats, particularly if we will be allowing the new stamp ASA bats. The answer is no. For tournament play we can only allow bats with the new USSSA stamp on the taper.

I also heard from a few teams regarding courtesy runners this weekend. I kicked the idea around for a time and ultimately decided against it on the advice of our National Office and so we won't be allowing courtesy runners for 2013.

We have a great online roster system. It's very user friendly and makes game days much easier for you as a manager and your team. It eliminates the need to track down all your players Saturday morning and makes registration a snap. If you need help with any of it, feel free to contact me.

We had our first weekend of Conference Colorado bat testing and all in all I'd have to call it a success. In most cases we managed to get the bats off the field, tested and back before they were needed at the plate and on that front I was happy. It'll be a little bit stiffer test in places like Aurora where the distance from bucket to tester is much greater.

We're going to continue with the program but make one minor change going forward. We'll continue to penalize the team hitting for any bats brought out of the dugout during the course of play but we're eliminating the penalty for bats taken into the dugout. Rather than the batter closest to home being called out, we'll now simply remove the bat from the game and won't allow a replacement re-certified bat in. Short version, if you take the bat in the dugout accidentally, intentionally or otherwise, the bat won't be allowed back on the field for the duration of that game.

Nice turnout for our first trip to Greeley this weekend and hoping the weather holds.

See you all Saturday