USSSA Illinois

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Apr 1, 2017
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Received this email this morning. Curious what everyone thinks. The cynic in me thinks this won’t really do anything but raise tourney fees.



I hope everyone had a great fall and our now gearing up your teams for the summer. I'm sending this email to inform you that there has been a major change in how USSSA tournaments will be run in Illinois.
Our State Office has partnered with Official Finders, Inc to assist us in assigning umpires for ALL USSSA tournaments. This decision was based on several years of feedback about umpires, lack of umpires, need for younger umpires and costs discrepancy of umpires across the region.
Our office has addressed these concerns from our coaches, tournament directors and are proceeding forward with a plan. This effects your team in regards to higher team registration fees for USSSA tournaments. You could see a $75 – $100 increase in tournament registration fees this upcoming season. This increase is NOT the blame of tournament directors; this increase is to close the gap of what umpires are getting paid from tournament to tournament. It is not fair to our USSSA teams that one tournament has all the “good umpires” and the other one doesn't because of the cost of umpires.
I wanted to let you know asap about this changed that just occured yesterday and I apologize if this effects your playing in USSSA tournaments but I wanted to be upfront and fair. We value you as our customer and want to provide you better umpiring across the State. If you have any further questions please feel free to email me.
I greatly appreciate your patronage to USSSA and we will see you on the fields.
 
Jun 6, 2018
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That will be interesting because Illinois has the b/c level teams in USSSA tournaments so pushing their tournament fees could see the NSA, game day, and other b/c organized tournaments get a revival.

as for the A teams this will not affect them as most are lucky if they play in 1 USSSA tourney a year (fall&summer)
 
Jul 31, 2019
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There is a lot more to the changes. With USSSA taking control of the umpires, our umpire cost is going up from $40 to $52 or $24/game using two umpires. In addition, the team cost referenced above is understated. The tourney host pays USSSA between $20 and $25 per to to sanction with USSSA. It’s going up to $28/team

For a 64 team double elimination tourney (roughly 200 games), the cost increase is:

64 teams x $8 = $512
200 games x $24/gm = $4,800
$5,312 adder
I’ve talked to several IL tournament directors that run larger tourneys, and all of us are seriously considering moving away from USSSA
 
Apr 1, 2017
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I’m curious to see how the final fees look. We typically play 2 or 3 USSSA per season.

another issue isn’t just the cost going up, but the timing of the announcement is tricky. We have already done our budgeting and the families have their fees for the season. If we play 3 USSSA tournies, the extra costs +\- eliminate one of our budgeted tournaments, or at least a round robin.
 
Mar 28, 2014
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USSSA has to pay for all of those admin salaries somehow. USSSA CEO makes about $750,000 a year. State directors can make over $100,000/yr. They will keep raising prices until the market tells them to stop.
 
May 29, 2015
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Here is what umpires received (sorry for some overlap in a few screen shots, I don’t have my e-mail on my iPad) ...

33D26863-1138-42EE-A859-56DB7C6E0A6C.jpeg
6F778E2A-BF70-45DD-ACD4-D52E4221400C.jpeg
8B02478F-2497-4598-9856-C67E69BA1557.jpeg7FE07F5E-580D-4195-9E66-E7492651FDD6.jpeg1872E66D-4425-45C8-B96B-4C20F6406521.jpeg
 
May 29, 2015
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So ... I am not sure what that means. The way I first read it, it was only tournaments under this guy’s direction.

But he is the state tournament director, so umpires for ALL Illinois tournaments will be centralized? Tournaments pay USSSA, USSSA pays Official Finders, Official Finders pays me ... two more hands taking a cut? All my USSSA tournaments are now going to be on one 1099? (That will be a major roadblock for many umpires.)

More as I find out ...

Personally, my gut reaction I will not be doing USSSA tournaments. I have an issue with centralized systems (looking at you too Arbiter) where there is another faceless corporation in my business.
 
Last edited:
Feb 15, 2017
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My prediction is that the quality won’t improve, blue will make slightly more, and the TD and third party will make even more. Maybe this will swing the balance of power back towards USA and/or non-sanctioned. There are a fair number of extremely well ran/officiated tournaments around that we have participated in over the years but everyone runs for the sanctioned/more expensive.
 

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