Gentlemen of the BA,

Can’t blame you for thinking we can play outdoors forever: late October appears to be the new late September! Alas, we all know it will change all too soon – darkness, frosts warnings, the age-old question, “Why do I live in a place where the air hurts my face!?” Well, allow us to provide a silver lining to the dark clouds of a Canadian winter: Thursday evenings in the dome, Thursday nights at The Bad Alibi, the indoor soccer season is upon us! Please bear with us and have a read, this communication does include information we want you all to absorb, the way you have probably been absorbing the Halloween candy you bought a few weeks ago.

Welcome N00bs!

First order of business, a warm welcome to the newest members of the BA Soccer League! We are convinced, and expect you will be soon enough, that this is a league unlike any other. As you have no doubt read in our separate communication to the Newbies that is surely NOT caught in your spam filter (it’s not too late, go ahead and recover it!), we place great emphasis here on keeping things fun, friendly and respectful every single week. We know you’ll enjoy your first season in the league and implore you to make at least a few appearances at the pub to get to know your league mates, be they teammates or future teammates. Don’t forget that we have great prizes at the pub that only pub dwellers… er… goers… are eligible to win.

Rosters

We did it again! Yeah, maybe it took a pinch of blackmail, a dash of favours, and a dollop of threats, but we managed to convince eight of you to manage a team. The rest of you, please go easy on them. They’ve been through a lot (especially this week). For those taking names, here they are:

Green – Ryan Zurawell
Pink – Matt DeSouza
Yellow – Colin Raines
White – Brian Garson
Orange – Nem Jevtovic
Black – Tom Borbely
Light Blue – Ron Garson
Red – Yanic Giroux

You can find your team and game info on TeamSnap (see additional note below). The full list of teams can also be found on the website.

Opening Night Reminder

You’re looking at 7 days until kickoff, that’s 7 chances to take a jog around the block after dinner! You may chortle at the idea but think of the advantage that sort of training regiment could give you. Everyone would ask your secret. Okayyy… back in the real world, here’s one thing we’d really appreciate you actually doing: please get to the dome a bit early (15 minutes is always recommended but maybe even earlier this time) to let your manager sort out shirts and anything else they want to relay to the team before the game.

TeamSnap

Please accept your invitation to TeamSnap, whether you prefer using the website or the phone app it is a very valuable tool and takes (a bit of) the pain out of managing. First and foremost, PLEASE set your availability as far into the future as possible. If you believe you will be attending the next month’s worth of games, set your attendance for those games – you can always change it if something comes up. If you know you will be missing games, please mark those ASAP; it is vital for your manager to know early in the week to procure a replacement if needed. It’s also a nice way to communicate with your teammates, discuss tactics, plan post-game beers, etc.

If you have any trouble with teamsnap please send us an email: info@basoccer.ca and Brian Garson will help you out.

Spare Me!

Most of you know Dave Willey and Chris Bradley, but for those who do not you really should consider raising a glass at the pub with these fine gents. They do the tireless work of coordinating the spares each week, which requires monitoring rosters (you may notice them hanging out in your TeamSnap even if they aren’t on your team), cross-referencing the missing players with the players on the spares list and then doing some incredible mental gymnastics to figure out how to properly match the supply with the demand. We are grateful to have them working for us rather than wasting their talent solving rising global inflation. Joking aside, what they do is not easy, and we ask that you help make it easier for them by marking your availability early!

Give Us the Shirt Off Your Back!

Anyone who hasn’t yet brought back a shirt from the Outdoor season (or even last year’s indoor season, we won’t judge), consider this a Shirt Amnesty. Please bring them to Yanic – manager of the Red team who plays at 9:00 p.m. on the opening night. We recycle the shirts from season to season, in large part thanks to a patented detergent formula Denis Levesque invented in his basement lab, and it helps keep our costs down. Please help us out! Note: you are also encouraged to wash them yourselves from time to time, Denis’ ingenuity can only do so much.

Pick a Team Name and a Charity

This will be handled by the managers, but they will be asking you to come to consensus on two things for your team. First, we would like you to pick a witty team name that reflects the shirt colour you have been given. Secondly, and on a related note, we’d like you to select a charity to “play for” this season – at the end of the year we will recognize the best team name and the team that received the fewest (yellow/red) cards over the course of the season and make a donation to your charity of choice. We hope you like this new little wrinkle, and we also hope it gives you extra incentive to think of a great name and play like a true gentleman all season long.

The Bad Alibi

As it was last year, The Bad Alibi is our official pub of choice for post-game beverages, chatter, and re-carbulating. If you haven’t yet had their wings or all 14 or so flavours of their wings (Korean BBQ is a fan favourite), you are missing out – they are up there with the best. And at $10/lb exclusively for us on Thursday nights, free nachos for each table and a great selection of local craft beers, they make it really easy to continue your Thursday night with your favourite athletes. Besides that, showing up to the pub decreases the chances of everyone complaining about that pass you should have made to a wide-open teammate.

The BA Code of Conduct

Yes, we say this every season, but just call us suckers for the classics. The BASL is known as one of Ottawa’s absolute best recreational leagues when it comes to sportsmanship and camaraderie – this includes equal respect for teammates and opponents alike (within a few years those opponents will be your teammates), as well as referees.

Make no mistake, we do love a good and competitive atmosphere, and everyone has a bad day from time to time – there will be slip-ups – but anyone who develops a pattern of rash challenges, abusive behaviour, or just general lack of respect for the league’s goal of a fun and friendly atmosphere, will stick out like a sore thumb and will be dealt with swiftly and accordingly. This is our BA code of conduct. New players, you’ve been informed. Returning members, you certainly know this, and we are counting on you to set the example for newer players.

Indoor Rules

Mandatory Health PSA

You probably figured we couldn’t get away without mentioning it. There’s nothing urgent to discuss right now, but it bears repeating what really should be common sense by now: if you are at all feeling sick, Covid or not, or if someone in your household has symptoms, please rule yourself out for soccer. We have experienced the absolute bummer of having seasons ruined by the pandemic: let’s just do our best with what is within our control. You may recall that there is a health check function in TeamSnap. As of now we are not going to require using it, but if guidance from Ottawa Public Health or Health Canada changes, we may bring that back. I think I speak for everyone when I say, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

That’s it for now! Thank you all once again for joining us for another great season, we can’t wait to see you on the turf! Keep yourselves warm and your beer cold!

Your BA Executive Team

What a season we had in 2022! It may seem like a previous lifetime ago for some, starting the season in frigid May conditions with guys sporting tuques, mittens and a questionable selection of their wives’ yoga pants under their shorts. It wasn’t long thereafter that we were taking mid-half water breaks and fighting for the shade of the one tree that adorns Potvin NW. What really sticks out to us is how many ups and downs every team had over the course of the year. – Here’s how we’d sum it up:

• It’s a Boy! (Light Blue) crawled before they walked before they ran and became men, all in one season, winning the title before regressing to the womb with a performance in the playoffs that left them cranky and curled up in the fetal position.

• Pinky Blinders (Pink) came within a razor’s edge of winning a three-horse race for league glory, but were outgunned at the death. In the following (post)season, it was more of the same: a promising start that ended in tragedy and heartache.

• Liverpickled FC (Red) showed up completely loaded. They were the life of the party at the start; then they got a bit defensive, but still managed to hold everything down. Ultimately, despite things getting somewhat sloppy, it was really just the last shot at the end that did them in.

• The Dad Bod Blues (Dark Blue) proved they really do have guts. While slightly thin at the top at times, they pulled their weight on the back end and returned to their suburban mancaves with great stories to tell, and that’s no joke.

• Half the Players We Juiced to Be (Orange) were a bright and vibrant team, but their possession in the box proved pithy, which resulted in them settling near the bottom of the standings. However, once given a good shake, they played with zest and had a sweet run when it really counted and almost squeezed themselves into the Founders’ Cup. We hope the whole experience was a-peel-ing and didn’t leave them with a sour taste in their mouths.

• Yellow No Submarines (Yellow) found themselves in way too deep and under great pressure for most of the season. Just when we assumed they were completely sunk, they rose to the top and found themselves in rarefied air. It was a great final to watch, well fought between two tough teams. Huge congratulations are owed to U-boat. All you need is love, love (and maybe a penalty)… love is all you need.

Awards

Individual Spirit of the League – Congratulations to the six model gents who were nominated by their teams for the Spirit of the League Award. Glenn Borbely was selected as the winner (hats off to a supremely fine gentleman!), but all of you deserve a round of applause for embodying what we all want this league to be for many years to come.

Team Spirit of the League – Bravo to the Dad Bod Blues and their manager, Eben Crofton: they had zero cards issued this season. What an outstanding achievement and again something to be very proud of.

Best Team Name – Hey there, Half the Players We Juiced to Be… thanks again for making us type it out one last time. Turns out you were selected (possibly randomly but they tell me it was a vote) as having the Best Team Name of the season. Well done to the creative minds responsible!

Indoor Season

We are working away behind the scenes to get everything ready for the Indoor season, which kicks off on Thursday, November 3rd. We have not yet completed the team rosters, but will have them done soon. We hired a world-famous octopus to assist with the selection process, but he has been somewhat of a difficult-to-work-with diva. We’ll get there. Just get yourself in tip-top shape for November 3rd and keep an eye on your inbox for an email from your manager.

A hearty congratulations is owed to Chris Bradley’s “It’s a Boy” (Light Blue) team for taking home the trophy this summer! We brought in a consulting firm to help us improve the prize satisfaction index and the resounding recommendation was to give you guys free beer! So congrats!

Light Blue has won a $200 bar tab for the team, to be used at The Bad Alibi at the year-end party (Oct 15th). Only time will tell whether Chris is forced to drink all $200 of it himself, or Dave Willey will allow a call-up from the spares list to help out. Ah, but what about the Cup, you say? Well, we plan to deal the same fate to the team that takes home the Cup this year! On a side note, if Light Blue wins the Cup too, we will just reallocate all party funds to renting out a party limo for them, and the rest of us can just stay home and watch that HBO show about the dragons and long-haired blonde people.

We have not yet sent out the polls to determine the Best Team Name and Spirit of the League awards but will do so in short order so we can announce the winners at our End of Year party (Oct 15th, remember?).