How are Uniform jerseys ordered and distributed?

Each team will be provided the following for each child:

(1) Team Jersey customized with Sponsor Info

(1) Pair of Socks

(1) Pair of Pants

(1) Baseball/Softball Hat

If a parent would like to swap the size of their child’s pants with a different size, we will have pants available at the Northwest Fields Concession Stand beginning in Mid April. They will have the opportunity to “swap” sizes by stopping by the Northwest Fields Concession Stand sometime after April 15^th.

As far as the jerseys go, since they are customized with the Sponsor Info, we don’t have the ability to just swap them out with different sizes without incurring a substantial cost and long lead time.

Lining up the kids along the fence, from shortest(smallest) to tallest (largest), and handing out jerseys, starting with the smallest size and working your way up, is the best way to ensure that each child gets the jersey most closely suited for them.

We realize that all of the jerseys are not going to be perfect fits for each of the kids. Some of them may be considered way too long by some parents. Our best suggestion is to have the child tuck them in, which they should do during games and practices anyways.

With over 900 kids in our league each Spring/Summer season, and the sponsor customizing we do with the uniforms, we have not come up with a “foolproof” method of ensuring all of the kids get sized with the exact sized jersey that they would prefer.

We have “tweaked” sizes for divisions in the past, but it seems no matter how much we “tweaked”, we have never got it “right” in everyone’s eyes. And to be honest with you, with the varying degrees in which kids grow, I don’t know that we will ever get there.

We order the jersey sizes for each division based on our past experiences and the experience of our vendor, which is vast, due to the volume of uniforms that they do nationwide.

In the past, several people have suggested having the parent designate the jersey size during the online registration, or to have an in person jersey sizing.

And yes, we do have the option to have a parent choose the jersey size with our online registration system.

But it has its "challenges" as well.

Each season we approximately 80 teams.

Right now we do our preliminary uniform order in Mid February in order to ensure we are able to get all of the needed jerseys.

Due to the ordering lead time and Sponsor customization, and the fact that we don't choose teams until the 3rd week in March, we would need to move back the start of our season in order to allow the needed lead time for the uniforms.

We could not order the uniforms until the teams were formed due to not knowing which team each child would be on.

If all jerseys were the same color, this would not be an issue, but as you know, each team in a division is a different color.

And I don't think our registrants or sponsors would be happy if every team was the same color.

If we ordered the uniforms during the 3rd week of March, after teams were formed, we would be "pushing it" to receive the customized uniforms prior to Mid May, and it would most likely be the end of May.

And from past experiences, we have found that parents prefer to not play beyond the second week of July due to vacation “season”.

Another option we have looked at is having the registration cut off date and team formations occur earlier, say at the end of February, but from our experience doing so would have "repercussions" as well.

During past seasons, we have advertised March 1st as our cut off date to be guaranteed a spot on a team. We have found that we generally receive about 30% of our player registrations after that date.

So if we had a "hard" cutoff date of March 1st each season, many kids may not have the opportunity to play.

Once the sun comes out, people remember that they want their child to play baseball/Softball/Tball. :)

So in a nutshell, we do the best job we can where the ordering of Jerseys is concerned!