The ATPD used to begin the basketball leagues for boys and girls during the month of November. In 2006, the ATPD began to stagger the start of the various leagues instead of beginning them all at once. For some leagues, this has caused schedule conflicts for those children who play in the ATPD's basketball leagues and participate in fall soccer. Why did the ATPD choose to changes the leagues' dates?

The time frame for the ATPD Recreational Youth Basketball program was changed to make better use of the limited gym availability within the Township. We have one gym in our control (The Beech Acres Park RecPlex) and we try to supplement this facility by renting additional gym time from the Forest Hills School District. Gym time is a prized commodity in our area, and we are constantly striving to make the best use of the limited time and space with which we have to run our program, which serves approximately 1,000 children on 100 teams.

While the Forest Hills School District is a valuable partner to us, each year they have more user groups and programs of their own to fit into their complicated facility schedule. Over the years, weeknight gym availability has decreased while our participant numbers have not. It was impossible to serve all the participants with the available gym time without scheduling games and practices at 8:30pm on weeknights and/or providing teams with very inconsistent practice schedules. Our post-league evaluations reflected parent's dislike of the late time slots during the week and inconsistent practice schedules. Therefore, we chose to stagger the start and split the seasons in order to provide more consistent practice schedules and limit the dreaded 8:30 pm start time during the week. Many leagues, such as CYO, have used this format for years as they, too, needed to make the best use of their limited facilities. While we know we won't make 100% of the participants and their families happy (particularly those playing competitive fall soccer), we feel the change will result in a greater overall satisfaction rate among the 1,000 league participants.

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