The 2012 Player Registration form is now available in two formats - HTML and Excel. This form will need to be completed for each Rockets player.

Please note that this year the registration form will need to be filled out prior to participating in either Ralph's or Anna's winter pitching clinics, but the 2012 Rockets player registration fees for the season do not need to be paid at this time. 

There is a separate fee for the 2012 clinics which will need to be paid, and this includes the liability insurance we have to obtain to use the facilities at St. Albans and Fletcher elementary schools, as well as the facilty fees.

Dates for both clinics are the following Sundays:

     January 8, 15, 22 & 29

     February 5, 12, 19 & 26

     March 4, 11 & 18

Registration forms and fees should be paid at the clinic.

At the Rockets Invitational both the 16U and 18U Rockets captured the 2011 ASA State Championship titles!

The 18U dropped the opening game to the Veront Storm on Saturday, but rallied to win both games on Sunday and take the best of three championship series.

The 16U team went 2-2 on Saturday with wins over the Vermont Rippers and Vermont Storm, and dropping games to the Brattleboro Heat and Vermnt Cougars. The young 16U squad went into Sunday's single elimination undaunted as the #4 seed and secured the state title with victories over the #5 Central Vermont Smash, #1 Brattleboro Heat and then over the #3 Vermont Cougars in the Championship Game.

Congratulations to both teams on your well earned state titles!!

Now it's on to the Nor'Easters Tournament to wrap up the season in style!

The 2011 schedule has been updated to replace the cancelled CT Titans tournament with the USSSA CT State Championships, and the hotel was updated to the Holiday Inn Express in Hartford, CT.

Parents - please use the web link in the hotel list to book your rooms.

If you prefer not to use the web, please call the number 860-525-1000, but you will have to ask for the corporate rate "USSSA" ... please understand that the general reservation folks may not know what "USSSA" is as it is intended for group bookings and not for individuals. Please be patient with and ask the desk clerk to check with Kevin McCabe and make sure they know you are booking with the VT Rockets.

I hope ... and pray ... that this will be the last scheduling change for 2011 - and maybe 2012 too!!

Hey All - Hopefully you all got the news that the 16U schedule was updated with  the 2nd Annual Battle of the Bats in Greenfield, MA replacing the cancelled Bennington tournament ... Don't forget to cancel your Bennington reservations!

Thanks to everyone who came to the pre-season meeting Sunday in St. Albans - great turnout! The 2011 Team Meeting handout is now available in case you missed the meeting or forgot to take one home ...

And we just got word that our tournament will be the 2011 ASA Vermont State Championship for both 16U and 18U this year. I've raised the team entry fee for our tournament $50, and we will provide some kind of "prize" - I'm leaning toward tee-shirts for the players as I prefer something for the players and coaches over a trophy.

Stay tuned - good luck to everyone as the high school regular season wraps up and we roll into the playoffs pretty quickly!

Ralph has been working feverishly behind the scenes to keep the pitching clinic going this winter. He lost his facilities and had to find a new home ... and was able to keep the clinic in the neighborhood as this year it will be moving to the St. Albans Town School.

But with the move came a few changes, and ... you guessed it ... new expenses. We now have to pay janitor's fees, though the school has been very kind in keeping those to a minimal cost per hour with no flat fee for the function added on. With this new fee Ralph has shortened the clinic to 4 hours. There are some additional expenses for tape and accessories as well.

And of course there were the ever present insurance requirements! Bruz Brown of the Vermont Cougars was very gracious and pulled together the ASA team insurance for the Vermont teams early - that will cover any of the Rockets players taking part in the clinic. But all of the other players require clinic insurance which was available through the same company that provides our team insurance. That cost is pretty minimal at a little over $200 for the entire clinic, and I am in the process of getting that set up.

All of these additional costs will be covered by a nominal $50 fee for this year's participants.

The clinic dates are as follows: Jan. 9, 16 & 30, Feb. 6, 20 & 27 and March 6 and 13.

Please note - Rockets players will need to fill out the 2011 Rockets Registration Form prior to the first clinic. The form is available on the website, and Ralph will have copies available at the clinic.

Non Rockets players will need to fill out the 2011 Rockets Pitching Clinic Registration Form - which is also available on the website.

The tournament and hotel info for the upcoming 2011 season is now available in the Rockets Files 2011 section (under 'General Handouts').

We get things rolling the last weekend in June with the 16U participating in the Brattleboro Heat Sizzler while the 18U travels a little farther south to Lowell, MA to play in the 2011 Ruckus. The Ruckus will mark the first time the Rockets have participated in an NSA tournament - the main difference is they use a "Pay-As-You-Go" format. The entry fees are lower, but each team has to pay an umpire at each game ... in essence teams that exit early (and therefore play fewer games) get a small price break, and teams that stay till the semi-finals (and therefore play more games) pay a little bit more. The tournament covers the umps for the championship game.

Just so you know ... all of our other tournaments this year are ASA, though I looked at several PONY and USSSA tournaments as well. There are generally few differences - with the main difference being the umpires are sanctioned by each group. Registration fees are anywhere from $10 and $25 per team for each organization, and they all recognize the Bollingers Insurance policy we purchase through ASA.

After taking the July 4th weekend off - allowing our graduating seniors to participate in the North-South All Star games at Castleton State, and everyone else to enjoy the holiday weekend away from a softball field - we return to a couple of familiar places. The 18U travels to Mechanicville, NY (Clifton Park area) for the Slik Chix tournament and the 16U to Bennington for the Jessica Bologani Memorial.

After going their separate ways the first two weekends both teams travel together the rest of the season. We are off to the Nutmeg State as the Rockets make our first foray into Connecticut ... at least since I've been around in 2002. We will be playing in the CT Titans Triumph in Wolcott, CT (between Waterbury and Hartford). There are a lot of tournaments now in the general Hartford area, so if this trip turns out well we may look to make a trip to CT every year ... I've contacted several CT tournaments and it seems they all have the right perspectives.

FYI ... the hotel there is in Plainville, CT ... not Plainfield, CT ... as I had in the original email.

Then we get a real rarity ... a weekend off in July! And even better for us ... it's the weekend BEFORE our tournament, so we should have a much easier time preparing. We'll try to get most of the work done during the two weeks so everyone can have the weekend off. Our tournament will be the last weekend in July ... Friday 29th through Sunday 31st.

And for another twist, we will finish up at the Nor'Easters in Laconia/Weirs Beach. FYI - they moved their tournament back a week this year because there is a Hell's Angels ride-in going on the previous weekend ... and thankfully someone realized that Hell's Angels and ASA Sofball were not a good mix! So rather than have a Saturday night BBQ to plan for our tournament and then ending our season at Georgia Beach, this year we will have an "end of the season" BBQ at the Weirs Beach Motel on Saturday night.

I'm pretty happy with the schedule - it flows nicely, we never play more than 2 weekends in a row, and there is a nice variety of venues.

Other than Weirs Beach, I was able to book all Fairfield Inns and Best Western Hotels this year. We've had good luck with these chains in the past - they are generally clean and both have one of the better breakfast buffets which include hot foods as well as cold. And they generally provide decent group rates, with almost all of them of them charging $89 per night. We have had some bad hotel experiences in the past - and almost every one of them came when I tried to save a few dollars by going to cheaper hotels.

So book your rooms now - with the exception of Weirs Beach you can always cancel up to 24 hours in advance, or even the same day ... but you may not be able to get a room at the last minute, and you probably won't get the group rate if you call after the cutoff date.

Let's hope the season turns out as good as it looks on paper - see you all at the team meeting on Sunday May 15 - at noon at the Elks Club in St. Albans!