LET TOM RUN THE ENTIRE FOOTBALL,LEY SHAY PAINT THE LINES

Dude, you need to calm down. We`ve almost never gotten a turf field on Sunday mornings in the Spring. Only reason they get them on weeknights is that Fairfax county mandates that youth sports end at 8 PM, which if you`ll notice, is when the weeknight games begin.

Youth sports, especially soccer in the Spring, will always win out over adult flag football, through no fault of Shay or Tom.

If you think you can do a better job of getting fields, I`d highly encourage you to step up and give it a shot. But make sure you let everyone know who you are, so we can call for YOUR head when you fail.

we had poplar tree for Sunday mornings along with lake fairfax and ec lawrence for as long as I can remember...you have no idea what your talking about.

Shay...you need to step up your game and run the league as Tom was, when he was running it on his own and you were not around!

Bundy...you don`t remember playing on turf Sunday mornings cause you were still a rookie down in the dumps of the C league playing on the asphalt fields over at Baron "Sh*t" Cameron.

Here in the A we deserve the turf fields. A lot of us are ex college athletes that who play at a high and intense level. The last thing I need while running full speed trying to eye a long ball in, is to step into unforeseen ditch or elevated patch and blow out an ACL or dislocate a hip!!

This talk of the kids having first dibs on the playing fields is one ridiculous and a myth. I have driven by a few ffx county fields on a Sunday and seen men`s adult soccer going on.

We need to do a better job of getting the permit forms in. I`m assuming it`s a timely issue and the other leagues are beating us to it. If that`s not the case, then we need to find other fields or parks that have turf or a LEVEL SOFT grass field!

Thanks!

It is not Shay`s call. Fairfax County owns the fields and they decide who plays on them and when. You say Bundy does not remember when we played on turf fields on sunday , well, maybe you should take a step back to us guys who played ONLY on grass before turf fields cam about. This is a rec league and if you feel the fields we play on are not up to your standards- take your college playin , NFL wanna be hide somewhere else. I work for parks and recreation and the youngsters DO have first dibs and permits. Thos soccer guys jump on any where they can , but Fairfax does not have the manpower on sundays to police All of the fields. You is a college kid ,so you should know to have your facts and history straight before calling someone out.

Big Jim and and Hey Al.. probably the same person. You don`t play A. You can`t play football period. stay home. you say you play A just to start crap. If you were a good football player you wouldn`t care if it was turf or grass. your just pissy and trying to waste peoples time. you don`t think shay wants to get turf fields?

Youth soccer isn`t the only sport that gets precedents over flag football. Any youth sport such as lacrosse also does.

Your a little stuck up prick whos parents paid for everything, and you dont want to get your new cleats dirty in the mud. this league doesnt need you.

Youth activities comes first in Fairfax County.

Deal with it.

@"Hey Al" - If you are so worried about breaking a hip, get Life Alert.

Hey Al and Big Jim you two or one need to get your facts right and chill out!

I was in this league when it started 93. Tom and Shay started this thing together and have always worked together in both leagues.

Tom does take over the league from time to time when Shay is gone with military deployments, but the league runs the same with one or both of them.

Keep up the good work Shay and Tom!

The following was pulled off FFX County`s Parks & Recreation web page:

Turf Field Allocation Guidelines Purpose:

To establish guidelines which help determine the allocation of field space on synthetic turf fields in Fairfax County to ensure that community use of these fields is scheduled in an equitable manner and that as many youth and adults as possible have the opportunity to participate on these fields. These guidelines do not supersede the scheduling provisions in Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) for synthetic turf fields that have been developed in partnership with organizations through community resource contributions.

Guideline:

An organization’s estimate of hours requiring turf field use per week will be determined by the following formula: (organization participation / total participation of all organizations) x total available turf field hours per week. Using that total estimate of hours, CRS will attempt to schedule organizations accordingly on turf fields within their geographic area. It should be noted that implementation of this guideline will have no impact on the overarching Fairfax County Field Allocation Policy, as each organization will only be allocated the total field space (synthetic turf + grass) that the policy regularly provides. Hours scheduled to groups that have MOUs governing their allocations will be counted towards their turf field allocation. Groups that contribute financially to the development of a turf field after December 1, 2008, will have 50 percent of their assigned time on the field they contributed to count toward their turf field allocation.

Specific hours will be designated for adult participation and will not be counted toward the total available turf field hours for youth organizations. Adult organizations’ allocations of turf fields will be determined in the same manner, using available hours designated for adult use.

Endorsed by the Fairfax County Athletic Council, June 21, 2007
Amended, November 19, 2008


I`m not too sure if this formula is EQUITABLE as they state in the first paragraph.

Not sure how the rest of the league feels, but I side with HEY AL on this issue. Although he should of voiced his opinion w/o calling someone out. I play in the A division and for the past 5+ or so seasons we have been primarily on the synthetic turf fields. Last season the county allocated our time to the grass fields which obviously is not as nice. The majority of the grass fields are in poor condition and some (Baron Cameron) barely have grass covering the field.

I would pursue alternative options such as:

1) Inquiring about the High School fields. (Arlington County Flag League does this)

2) Push back our playing start times to early afternoon times.

What do you guys think?

"(organization participation / total participation of all organizations) x total available turf field hours per week"

what`s our count versus youth leagues?

"Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) for synthetic turf fields that have been developed in partnership with organizations through community resource contributions"

I`m pretty sure we don`t contribute any community resources.

"Here in the A we deserve the turf fields. A lot of us are ex college athletes that who play at a high and intense level."

Who is this self-centered conceited ahole? Here in the A we deserve the turf fields. Get over yourself man, it`s a Sunday morning sports league, you`re not in the NFL.

I appreciate everyone`s opinion on this, well maybe not HEY AL and BJ....LOL

I`ll try to explain this the best I can, AGAIN. Here is the situation for the fields for FCFFL and IFFL.

Tom puts in the permit for both leagues IFFL and FCFFL, for the spring and fall season. I`m the one that goes to FX park and rec and deals with them on a face to face basis for both leagues and season.

The fact is we are not going to get turf fields for Sunday mornings for any Spring season in the near future probably never. We might be able to get turf fields for the fall, but that is a big "maybe" and would depend on youth tackle football working with us, but I wouldn`t count on that either.

1) Inquiring about the High School fields.
We will not get High School fields, we did that once before. Most are controlled by the County and the one`s that are not we would have to pay a large some of money, like $500 per day, that`s not going to happen.


2) Arlington County Flag League controls all the fields in the their county to include the High School fields. They also run all the leagues and can put what sports they want on what fields. FX does not run leagues it just allocates fields, and Tom and I do not work for FX County.

3) Push back our playing start times to early afternoon times.

We looked at pushing back the times and the field space gets even worse, later in the day, we would lose the fields we already have after 12PM. Most youth sport have the permits starting at 8am they don`t really start till noon and they have them till 6pmish. Youth sports won`t give up their permit time to us, even though their not using the field, we`ve tried that as well.

Before you ask NO we are not going to have a Sunday night league.

Grass sucks for Tom and me as we`ll, we spend appx $600 to $700 per season on paint that`s appx $1,400 a year not to include man hours to paint the fields which not including travel time is about 5 hours per week.

Tom and I really are happy with the league considering all we have lost with our field allocations over the last couple years but the fact is if you have to play on turf then you should probably only play in our weeknight league or go play somewhere else.

Shay

We had turf fields for the past 5 years. Why all of a sudden did we lose the ones we had?

As I`m sure is the same with 95% of the league I was brought up playing on grass so to me the issue is a moot point. My question is has Fairfax County ever given a reason as to why youth sports gets first crack at the turf fields? Is it a safety thing? Do they have so many teams that a rainout would decimate the season(s)? Parental lobbying? I think people might leave the issue alone if we actually knew the reasoning behind it.

Do it even matter, none of you guys get payed to play fing flag football, the feilds was put there for the kids, not you adults who think they should be the N.F.l, Ive played in this league for years, the only issue that we will prob. run into now is rain outs, its not the serious, Shay where are we getting the guys from, We need a 35 and over league.

Unless states is here in Fairfax, both the state and national tournaments are played on grass as well.

We had the turf in the Fall predominately, not Spring. We had 2 turf fields in the Spring.

What happened was...

1)High Schools without turf got priority afternoon use during weekdays, which caused...

2)Non-school affiliated youth leagues which previously played weekdays to have to move to the weekends.

I`ve seen adult soccer out there too in the Fall, but the primary permit holder is a youth organization. I have confronted them directly about adult soccer using Youth turf allocation for practice or on darkened fields through sub-allocation, and they won`t do anything about it. These are huge soccer organizations which register thousands of participants, and they even admitted that they were holding that field in reserve for make-up games. Ridiculous.

There will be more turf fields coming online this year and next, and we have a plan to get at it on Sundays. I am a little more optimistic that we will have some Sunday turf this Fall than Shay is, but he is trying not to mislead anyone. Every team knew they would be playing on grass before they registered. Believe me, we are not the only organization who was pushed off their Sunday morning turf allocations.

Weeknights are not as much of an issue as Youth cannot be out there at the time out games are scheduled so the competition is less. there are other adult leagues that would love our weeknight allocations, but only youth/schools can squeeze those slots and as mentioned - they cannot schedule that late.

Just keep in mind we have done everything possible to try and secure turf...even asked for 7-10 AM so we could at least schedule some games before other user groups took the field, no dice. If you see a turf field not being used Sunday mornings, just let Shay know so he can follow-up and let the County know someone is sitting on the field space.

TOM

think there maybe a turf field not being used on Sunday at South Run Park

Just flag football.

northern virginia is full of pampered pricks. football is played on grass so play ball. i cant believe people are *****ing about having to play football on grass......comedy

he mite have bad feet idk

Shay has no clue what he is doing,haave you ever seen him at any feilds?He took our money got the cheapest feilds possible and ran to the bank, C teams 1st year playing A teams week 1 ,our team probably will drop out as this is no fun,

EC Lawrence on Sunday morning.

You don`t know Shay like most of us do and if you are new to the league , then you have to take your lumps like very one else. Be patient - you will find out that your team will get better by playing an A team every once and awhile. Maybe you should finsh out the season before making judgement. hate to see you go , but if all you gonna do is complain then --- C -Ya!!!!!!!

That was crazy how many C teams were playing A level teams for week one. One A team played two C teams for a double header. That is nuts and negatively affects the records and points spread. The 3 divisions seems to work better.

Have to agree with the A teams playing C teams. I would hate to be on one of those C teams. They will basically get smashed almost every week. Wouldn`t be surprised to see some teams drop out. It`s not very fun getting your a$$ handed to you every week.

The A teams should be separated into their own division because they are locks for their respective divsions.it iwll allwork out in the end and I am sure the fall will be different.

You knew what you signed up for. So stop complaining. It wasn`t like it was changed last second from A, B and C to open. Its been posted for a long time and if you still don`t like it.. take your team to the coed leagues. You will probably still get the crap kicked out of you.

Tom and Shay posted this last week about the Open league:

Good question and I agree I know we need a Novice league but over the last few years had to many teams that didn`t want to move up from C to B and from B to A so we went back to the Open format for this season only to reset things.

A mass email was sent out to all the coaches few months back but here is the plan:

This Spring Open with an A/B/C Playoffs

In the fall we will go to an A/B format, where 50% of the teams will have to play in the A league. The playoffs will be the same A/B/C.

Then by the Spring of 2012 we will have an A/B format again,and we MAY bring back a Novice league for that season.

*If we bring the Novice League back it will be for new teams and teams that have played less then 2 years, not B or C teams that change there name to stay in the Novice league.