Recreational Team Formation Process

We want to make everyone aware of a change you will see starting with this year’s basketball season on
how Meridian Youth Sports (formerly MYAA) forms teams.

Over the past few years, we have allowed parents to request coaches and friends to be on their
teams, and have allowed coaches to request kids to be on their rosters. Allowing these requests has started to
create a few problems that are in direct conflict with our goals and mission for youth sports at Meridian.

We want to create a recreational sports environment where kids of every ability level have a chance at
the same experience. In order to do this, we must have a system in place that ensures all our
recreational level teams are formed by equally distributing the skill levels of our kids.

After a lot of discussion on our board, we have decided to go back to a system that had already been in
place in the association’s by-laws, but we have drifted away from over the past several years.

Our recreational teams (in all sports) will be formed in the following manner.

When there are enough participants to form more than 1 team in a given age group or division:

• Head coaches will be given their own kid and can select 1 Assistant coach whose kid will be
  placed on their team.
• Kindergarten/1st Grade teams will be picked randomly and the rosters will be mutually agreed
  upon by the coaches to be as equal as possible.
• For grades 2-6 participating in all of our recreational level teams, all kids from a given grade will
  participate together in a skills evaluation that will be conducted by the coaches of that grade
  level.
• Once the skills evaluation has been completed, the coaches will select teams using a “draft”
  style rotation. Head Coach’s and their 1 Assistant Coach’s kids are “protected” and will not be
  part of the selection process.
• At the end of the selection, the rosters must be mutually agreed upon by the coaches to be as
  even as possible.
• If you would like your kid to “play up” above their actual grade level, we will allow this under the
  following conditions:
  • You are willing to either coach their team, or will be the assistant coach of the team
    your kid is placed on.
  • Your kid must participate in the skills evaluation in the grade level they will be playing in.

We understand that at some point, there are kids that are ready to start playing at a higher level,
and we want to make sure we do what’s best for those kids as well.

For Basketball, we offer the following options:

• AAU teams can be formed starting in 4th grade by holding a tryout that is open to all participants
• 3rd Graders are allowed to tryout for the 4th grade AAU team
• Coaches are allowed to put together their own rosters to participate in the “Extended”
  season that starts after the regular season is complete

We understand that this will be a big change from what many of you have experienced over the past
few years. Please understand that we put a lot of thought and discussion into this decision, and it was
made to help create a healthy recreational sports environment. Meridian is a small school district
whose athletic success is dependent on keeping as many kids involved in these sports as possible. We
truly believe that keeping teams equal at the recreational level will not only make a better experience
for these kids, but will also keep more kids/coaches involved in our sports.