Good morning, CSBL members!
I trust this new week finds you all well. I wanted to take a moment to bring you up to speed on league-related information.
Normally at this time of year we are increasing our workout routines in effort to prepare ourselves for the start of a new basketball season. As you know our annual “final registration day and rookie evaluation” occurs the first Saturday after Labor Day. In normal times that date would have been September 12th. Regrettably, we are not yet back to normalcy, so our final registration/evaluation day, and the start of our 2020/2021 season will not occur on schedule.
Our information from the school district at this time is non-committal as they have, more-or-less, adopted a wait and see approach to our gym use. The fact that schools will be opening in September however does give me some hope. Other positive signs are that most of the country, notably lead by New York State, is currently enjoying a downward trend in new Covid cases and deaths. It is unclear at this point when a Covid vaccine will become available and what its efficacy might be; and, for that matter, what percentage of people will want to be vaccinated.
As a CSBL member we want you to rest assured that our League will still be here and ready to open and accept all members when we are given the green light. We have put together a couple different schedule scenarios for a truncated season beginning in January or February (with a shortened regular season but with a full playoff format and banquet). We will modify those scenarios as we get closer to a potential opening date, including the prospect of a season that ends in late April, and the possibility of an outdoor/pavilion banquet which would be safely within the health guidelines.
As more information comes to us, we will keep you updated, both with emails and with postings to our newly upgraded website: www.colonieseniorbasketball.com.
Back in early July I was informed by Ed Shepard, our long-time league member, and Webmaster, that he was stepping down from his post as league Webmaster for a well-earned retirement. We wish Ed and his wife Dierdre much happiness and great health in this next chapter of their lives. We will miss his weekly visits to the gym on Saturday afternoons and his wonderful companionship at our banquets and other league events. This changing of the technology guard has allowed up to reevaluate our website and conclude that updating the web-based software was in our best interest.
Over the past six weeks I have been working with Bluehost, our web-hosting provider, at rebuilding our website. We have maintained the same URL with is www.colonieseniorbasketball.com and much of the content is the same, however formatted a bit differently. What has changed, and what I hope will delight many of our members, is the amount of data and statistics that are now available online. In addition, we have added many more pictures, separated by theme (such as: team photos; action shots; banquet pictures; CSBL fan favorites). We also now, for the first time, have an online registration form. You simply click on the “Online Registration” in the main menu and are brought to a fillable form on the screen. Type in your information, hit submit, and your complete registration form, along with your digital authorizing signature, is emailed to our league email address (csblnews@gmail.com) where I then move it to an email directory of registrations. The final piece of making our registration process simple and efficient is the online payment. We will be working with AmazonPay and PayPal. Both of these options are low cost to the league (much cheaper than bank credit cards) and are no cost to you the member. The only requirement being that for members to benefit from this service they would have to be signed up for PayPal or be an Amazon Prime member. If these are not financial tools you are comfortable with we will still gladly accept your bank check or cash. We are however, looking to reduce those manual transactions as much as possible.
Enjoy the rest of our summer, stay safe and stay healthy, and keep thinking basketball! We will be back soon, and stronger than ever! I encourage you to visit our updated web site and feel free to add a note or message to our new “Member Forum” section or reply/respond to one of my posts in the new “Commissioner’s Blog” section. I say this to members all the time, but it is always worth repeating: we have a great thing going on with the CSBL, and are blessed to be participating in a sport at our age that we’ve loved our whole life. Don’t keep this treasure to yourself – tell a friend about us! Rookies as well as veterans can use the website to register so feel free to go ahead and register now. That way we will have a good handle on where our numbers stand when the time nears.
Lastly, I’d like to take an informal survey: please reply to this email and let me know if you: 1) presently have PayPal or Amazon Prime; 2) if you would be willing to use it to pay your CSBL dues; and 3) if you don’t have either PayPal or Amazon Prime if you would be willing to sign up for it.
See you on the hardwood!
Best Regards,
Andy Kramarchyk
CSBL Commissioner