We hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day Weekend!

We just wanted to reach out and give y'all an update regarding the starting back of our Birmingham APA League. Since not everyone has Facebook or checks their email regularly so, PLEASE SHARE THIS POST WITH YOUR FRIENDS AND TEAMMATES.

After more consideration and discussion, we plan on our regular Open Teams to be able to return to your SPRING SESSION starting next MONDAY, 06/01/20. We were going to start on May 31 but realized we needed a little more time to get those Sunday divisions set up correctly. Also, our LADIES 8-BALL SHOWDOWN division will probably start back in JULY, but we don’t have an exact date yet. Any start dates could change if our Governor or local authorities shut things back down again. Thus, the importance of us all working together to make sure this doesn’t happen when we get started back.

Most of you should know that most all of our Host Locations got to open back up this past Friday. Their pool tables are now available to be played on as well. However, there are still restrictions for them. Our Host Locations can only have up to 50% capacity in their locations. They must also follow the sanitary guidelines and 6 foot social distancing restrictions that have been placed on them at this time. It’s NOT an ideal situation for anyone but we can make it work to get our APA League started back again.

With our players’ health at the forefront of our minds, as well as helping our Host Locations follow their government restrictions, we have started identifying which divisions who may have to be modified and which divisions should be okay with a regular schedule. Our decisions were based on the number of teams in each division, the size of the Host Location, and the Host Location’s team sitting and pool table layout. If you’re in a division that isn’t modified and your team is playing in a small crowded Host Location, please limit your team attendance to ONLY the FIVE team roster members who will be playing that night. Also, until these restrictions are lifted some, please DON’T bring other guests to League play who are NOT on the team. Remember that these Host Locations may have other customers who will want to come in as well and they will have to stay under 50% capacity.

If you saw our live stream Session Meeting from last Wednesday night, you know that we have already developed some measures to help modify those divisions that our government restrictions affect. We also showed a list of projected dates for our upcoming APA events. If you didn’t get a chance to watch our stream, please take the time to watch the recording of it which can be found in the VIDEO section of our Birmingham APA Facebook page. Here is a quick link to the video:

https://www.facebook.com/BirminghamAPA/videos/247174726719675/

After reviewing all the divisions and the Host Locations they play out of, we have decided that we will NOT have to modify every division. In the specific IN-HOUSE divisions that need to be modified, we feel that the best solution is to SPLIT those divisions into TWO DIFFERENT days to help relieve the pressure of having so many matches in a limited facility at one time. This “Day Split” will mean they won’t have to split their rosters when they come to play which will allow most, if not all, of their team roster to attend. Most of our TRAVELING divisions matches should be okay without modification. However, due to a larger number of traveling teams based out of one specific home location, there may be some schedule changes, or some teams may be asked to play on another night.

After Memorial’s Day, we will start contacting our Team Captains via email and our Team Leaders Facebook Group regarding starting back. We will be discussing any temporary changes and how it affects each team. We have a lot of teams to contact in a short amount of time so PLEASE try to watch for us to contact you and REPLY to any email, post, or phone message as quickly as you can. By this next weekend, you should start seeing your revised Spring Session schedules come online in your APA App. All Days and divisions won’t all post at one time so please DON’T WORRY if you don’t see one of your division’s schedule listed yet.

We look forward to getting our APA League back started and seeing everyone. We also know that many of you are excited and ready for some fun again. Please remember that we ALL must work together to get back started and to stay playing. We don’t want to give our local authorities any reason to issue a fine or shut down or Host Locations and/or our APA League.

We will be in touch this next week so have a wonderful Memorial Day!

Skip & Joyce Lassiter
Birmingham APA