On behalf of the Oshawa Slopitch League Executive and the Oshawa Slopitch League membership, I wanted to take this time to update everyone on what has transpired over the past three weeks with attempting to get a 2021 season underway. The Executive attempted to gain more diamond time from the City of Oshawa, starting earlier in the day on each Sunday, but we were not granted any extra diamond time. As you all know, we only play on Sunday with a start time of 5 PM. With the communications from the City of Oshawa with respect to how we had to schedule our games with staggered start times and gaps between start times, we were losing diamond time every Sunday on each diamond.

Based on our communications with the City of Oshawa, the OSPL Executive sent out communication around a shortened season, to see what type of interest we would have, by division and by the League in total. Due to unfavourable results that we received back on our communication to try and get a shortened season for 2021, we do not have enough teams to make a shortened season feasible. We had planned on a 12 game schedule for a regular season with playoffs at the end of September as we have done in past years. Unfortunately, this will not be happening based on number of teams that were interested for this shortened season.

The response we received back from our team reps/captains was less than desirable either as a yes or a no. Some teams that responded back to us expressed concerns for not having enough players to play and teams wanting to wait for 2022 to start fresh with a full season. Some teams still expressed concerns around the COVID-19 virus and we completely understand their concerns.

With this unfortunate team response for 2021, we have no other option then to cancel the Oshawa Slopitch League season for 2021. This again, just like the 2020 season, was not an easy decision to make or a decision we wanted to make. But in reality, it is a decision that had to be made based on responses received, and for that matter, on responses not received for the 2021 season.

As we move forward as a league, we will begin the process for a OSPL 2022 season with a full schedule starting at the end of April and ending at the end of September, as we have done in the past. We will plan on our first AGM for the beginning to mid of January 2022 with meetings each month leading up to our season start at the end of April. The dates, times and location for these meeting will be posted on the website later this year in the fall. Please check our website for the meeting information.

On behalf of the Oshawa Slopitch League Executive, we hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable summer and we hope to see you all back on the diamond for 2022.