Dear Baseball Families

As many of you have heard, the ABF Tournament slated for January 2010 has been postponed. Naturally, the postponement was not expected, but within the rights of tournament organisers in Lismore, Australia, who have indicated that they could not field enough teams for the original dates in mid-to-late January.

Tournament organisers informed us of their decision on Monday, and word promptly went out later the very same day to all of our New Zealand baseball clubs of this decision. Due to the fact that we were in the process of naming our U-14 and U-17 national teams for this tournament, we had several key decisions to make going forward.

Firstly, we've decided to continue with the formation and announcement of both national teams. We've also decided to begin a practice schedule that will bring coaches, parents and players together to begin high intensity practices, sessions that will allow the teams to begin to familiarise themselves with one another and provide a forum for Baseball New Zealand leadership to discuss various options for both of these teams to explore in the coming weeks and months.

Practice schedules are being finalised by both coaching staffs, and at this moment the U-14 squad will have a practice session at Crossfields Reserve on Friday, December 11 at 6 pm that will also serve as the first of two sessions to finalise the roster among the named alternates.

The U-17 team is slated to begin practice on Monday, December 14 with time and location to be determined and announced this week. Team members, including alternates, have been contacted about this upcoming schedule. Both of the national teams that were scheduled to play in Lismore will be viewed as national development squads with a number of alternates, each of whom has the option to practice with the respective teams--with the understanding that if players drop out or off these two teams, replacements will be found initially among this group of alternates.

As soon as we hear a definitive statement from Baseball Australia, we will immediately contact all of you, in addition to all baseball clubs in the country, and we will post this information on Baseball New Zealand's website, which is continually being updated and improved for your benefit.

Finally, Baseball New Zealand board members will begin contacting organisers of various tournaments and teams from across the region in order to establish the highest quality playing options available in the coming months for both age groups. Once a decision is made, we will contact all of you directly and make our decisions known publicly. For now, let's get the teams on the field and prepare them for quality competition in the coming weeks and months. We ask all of you for your patience and understanding in this situation, as the decision to postpone this tournament was obviously out of our control. The only positive right now is that this delay in competition will allow all of us to effectively fundraise as a nation and keep costs at a minimum.

It is one of Baseball New Zealand's chief goals to ensure that overseas trip costs for our national teams become more reasonable over time to guarantee that we send our top players abroad who have worked so hard to make our national teams. Together, we believe this will be achieved through a comprehensive sponsorship, marketing and fundraising programme that we will unveil in early 2010.
We will post the rosters, including alternates on a 'development squad' for each age group, as soon as both coaching staffs have finalised reaching out to all of the players who attended tryouts across the nation.
Thank you once again for your patience, and please do not hesitate to call me at 021 665 339 if you have any additional questions.

I will be in New Zealand until December 15th, and will return from the United States on January 6th. You can also reach me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it at anytime and I will attempt to answer within 24 hours to all inquiries.
Thank you again for your patience and your support.

Ryan Flynn
Executive Officer
Baseball New Zealand